Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (32 page)

“Yes, sir,” said Riddell. “He’s the medical examiner in Atlanta, I believe.”

Bobby Lee Cook called Dr. Joseph Burton as the first defense witness. As a medical examiner in Miami and Atlanta, Burton had performed some seven thousand autopsies. At the time of Jim Williams’s trial, he was working on the well-publicized Atlanta child-murder case of Wayne Williams. Dr. Burton had autopsied nine of those murders. Cook was counting on him now to challenge the state’s interpretation of much of the evidence in the case against Jim Williams.

“Dr. Burton,” Cook began, “what, in your opinion, is the significance of a negative result for gunshot residue on an atomic-absorption test?”

“A negative result has relatively little significance to me,” said Dr. Burton. “A gun may give you a positive result on one firing and a negative result on another. It’s an unreliable test. Virtually
everyone in my profession of forensic pathology would like to see this test discontinued.” Dr. Burton went on to say that it was he who conducted the study of gunshot-residue tests on suicides and found that fewer than 50 percent tested positive.

“Then in your opinion,” said Cook, “does a negative result indicate that the deceased did not fire a weapon?”

“No, sir, it does not.”

Dr. Burton said he had visited Mercer House several times to reenact the shooting, and it was his belief that all the shots had been fired from behind the desk. “It would be physically impossible to walk around and shoot either the head shot or the back shot and have them go through the body and end up in the floor the way they did.” Burton interpreted the evidence just as the coroner, Dr. Metts, had suggested: The first bullet struck Hansford in the chest and spun him counterclockwise, accounting for the second and third bullets entering from the rear. Burton called attention to small particles of skull and hair that had been found in the southwest corner of the room, several feet from Danny’s head. “They were knocked out by the bullet passing through the body,” he said, “and they follow the same line the bullet follows.” So, Williams did not deliver a coup de grâce, said Burton. He fired three shots in rapid succession: “Bam, bam, bam—fast as the body fell to the floor. It accounts for the pieces of bone, the hair, the holes in the floor, the blood spatters, and the angles through the body.”

Dr. Burton offered an explanation for the presence of smeared blood on Hansford’s hand: After the first shot hit him, Hansford might have dropped his gun and clutched his chest. “Then as the body hit the floor the hand might simply have sprung out to the side. Then the blood would have been smeared as the hand came out from under the body.”

The chair on the pants leg? “The chair doesn’t really concern me in the case,” said Dr. Burton. “It doesn’t indicate a contrived scene. In fact, it would go against someone trying to set this scene up, because it seems to be somewhat out of place sitting on his leg.”

By the time Dr. Burton was finished testifying, the defense had
responded to most of the prosecution’s arguments. In addition, over Lawton’s objections, the defense had called several witnesses who testified that Danny Hansford was an extremely violent young man. A psychiatrist at Georgia Regional Hospital told of treating Hansford after he had broken furniture in his mother’s house and “threatened to kill someone.” The doctor said Hansford had to be subdued and secluded because he was “dangerous to the hospital staff and to himself.” A nurse at the hospital on that occasion said that when she admitted Hansford she classified him as “homicidal” on the admission form. A week after his death, in fact, Hansford had been due to appear in court on a charge related to a fist fight with a neighbor. Williams had paid the $600 bond to get him out of jail that time too.

The prevailing opinion in the corridors of the courthouse was that Bobby Lee Cook had raised just enough doubt about the state’s case to enable jurors to vote “not guilty” in good conscience. The groundwork had been laid for an acquittal. Now it was up to Jim Williams to take the stand and win the sympathy of the jury. It was a jury composed of six men and six women. They were plain, middle-class people—a secretary, a teacher, housewives, a nurse, a plumber. One of the women was black; the rest of the jury was white.

Williams took the stand dressed in a pale gray suit. He leaned forward respectfully as Bobby Lee Cook guided him gently through a narrative of his modest childhood in Gordon, Georgia. Williams told about his arrival in Savannah at the age of twenty-one, his restoration of houses, his success in business, and his rise in Savannah society. He spoke with a confident, somewhat lofty tone. He explained that twice a year he attended the international Fabergé sales in Geneva. “You’ve heard of Fabergé perfume?” said Williams. “We’re not talking about that. Karl Fabergé was the court jeweler to the czar of Russia and to most of the other European courts. He made some of the finest works of art that anyone has ever created. I collect Fabergé in a small way.”

Williams recalled how he had met Danny Hansford. “I was
getting out of my car in front of the house and this fellow rode up on a bicycle. He said somebody told him I hired people to work in my workshop who had no experience. I said, ‘Well, that is true, but I only hire people who are capable of learning things.’ Danny started off by stripping the finishes off furniture. He worked on and off for two years. Part time. He would leave town and then come back.”

In precise and chilling detail, Williams described Danny’s rampage through the house on April 3, a month before he died. Danny stood in the bedroom, having fired a shot into the floor, glaring at Williams, gun in hand. “How damn mad do I have to make you before you’ll kill me?” he said. Then he went outside and fired into the square. When Williams called the police, Danny ran upstairs and pretended to be asleep in bed.

It was shortly after that incident that Williams asked Hansford to go with him on his buying trip to Europe. Williams explained that his health had begun to suffer and that he had blacked out several times from hypoglycemia. He needed someone to accompany him. “I didn’t want to pass out somewhere en route without somebody with me for two reasons, healthwise and moneywise.” Williams would be carrying a large quantity of cash, he said, “because you get a far better rate of exchange on your money if you take it in cash.” He had asked Danny to go along “because I thought I could control him.”

But in mid-April, Hansford told Williams he was planning to take marijuana on the trip, and Williams said in that case he could not go. “Danny and I agreed we’d ask Joe Goodman to go instead,” said Williams. “We were both happy with that arrangement. Danny could smoke his dope in Savannah, and I’d have somebody to go on my trip with me.”

A week later, on the night of the shooting, Danny had exploded in a fury. As Williams told it, Danny had carried on about how his mother put him in detention centers and how she had hated him because he looked like his father, whom she had divorced. He raged on about his friend George Hill wanting his car and about his girlfriend Bonnie, who wouldn’t marry him be
cause he didn’t have a steady job. Then he turned on Williams. “And
you
took away my trip to Europe!” Hansford stomped the Atari game. Williams stood up and walked out of the room. Hansford grabbed him by the throat and threw him up against the door. Williams pulled away and went into his study to call the police. Danny came into the study after him. “Who are you calling?” he demanded.

“I had to think real quick,” said Williams. “I said, ‘I’m calling Joe Goodman to tell him the European trip is off.’” Williams dialed Joe Goodman, and both he and Danny spoke to Goodman on the phone. That was at 2:05
A.M.
The call had lasted a few minutes.

Williams continued his story as the packed courtroom listened in silence. “Danny sat down in the chair opposite me and leaned back. He picked up a silver tankard and held it in his hand and just looked at it. Then he said, ‘You know, this silver tankard has about made up its mind to go through that painting over there.’ It was an English painting, about eight and a half feet by ten feet, of the Drake family in the eighteenth century. Danny had that crazed look on his face.

“I stood up and put my finger straight out, and I said, ‘Danny Hansford, you’re not going to tear my house up anymore! Now, you get out!’ That’s when Danny got up and went out into the hall, and there were crashing sounds. He came back with a gun in his hand and said, ‘I’m leaving tomorrow, but you’re leaving tonight.’

“The minute I saw that Luger,” said Williams, “I reached into the drawer. As I was coming up from my seat, a bullet was fired at me. I felt the breeze go by my right arm.”

Some time between 2:20 and 2:25 A.M., Williams called Joe Goodman again, this time to tell him he had shot Danny.

Spencer Lawton stepped up for the cross-examination. He began by asking Williams to describe the guns he kept in Mercer House: the gun in the downstairs hall, the gun in the rear parlor,
the gun in the study, the gun in the living room. Williams sat back in his chair with his chin slightly raised. He stared at Lawton with a look of icy disdain and answered his questions in clipped syllables. Lawton led Williams once more through the events on the night of the shooting, to the point when Williams said he felt the breeze of the first bullet go by his right arm.

“Do you recall,” Lawton asked, “having told Albert Scardino of the
Georgia Gazette
in the interview four days after the incident that you felt the first bullet go by your
left
arm?”

“Mr. Lawton,” said Williams, “under those conditions, I was not taking notes.”

“Could it be,” said Lawton, “that you have some doubt as to which side of you the bullet went on because you were standing on the other side of the desk when you fired the bullet into the paper?”

“I never fired any bullet into any paper on any desk. What are you talking about?”

“And that therefore, thinking about yourself from this position, you would get the arms mixed up?”

Williams looked down from the stand with an expression of loathing. He was obdurate and imperious, not even slightly defensive. For all the world, he could have been the czar in his Fabergé cuff links, the emperor Maximilian sitting at his gold-encrusted desk. Williams assumed the haughty boredom of all the monarchs and aristocrats whose portraits and baubles he now owned.

Lawton moved on to another topic. “You’ve testified at considerable length concerning your relationship with Danny Hansford. Other than the fact that, as you tell it, he attacked you, did you have any reason to want to see him dead?”

“None whatsoever.”

“You had no particular resentment or dislike for him, no anger at him?”

“If I had, he wouldn’t have been around me. I was trying to straighten him out. I was trying to help him, and he made progress.”

“I have to say,” said Lawton, “that from what you’ve said of it, you do seem exquisitely solicitous of his needs. You had some
unusual
feelings about him, didn’t you, because—”

“What
unusual
feelings?” Williams cut in.

“I get the impression you considered it somewhat your personal charge to save him from himself.”

“It’s just that I was trying to help him make something of his life. Danny said to me on more than one occasion, ‘You’re the only person that’s ever really tried to help me. You’re the only person that hasn’t used me.’”

“Well, now,” said Lawton, “again I don’t want to seem picky, but I do want to understand the nature of the relationship and—”

“Fine,” said Williams.

“What exactly did he do for you? He drove?”

“Yes.”

“I think you testified that he was employed by you in two other capacities, one as a part-time worker in your shop and the other to look after you because of your health condition. Is that right?”

“Yes. He would come by and check on me. Sometimes he would spend the night in the house, sometimes he and his girlfriend would both spend the night in the house.”

“Did you ever pay him for any other work or service that he did other than what we’ve just described?”