Perfect Poison (36 page)

The biggest story in the nation on Tuesday, January 20, 1998, wasn't that a Nor'easter had pummeled most of New England with a blanket of fresh packed powder and delayed the Gilbert trial by four days, or that the trial had taken up banner headlines in the
Daily Hampshire Gazette
for the past two weeks. It was a certain White House intern who had claimed to have sexual relations with President Bill Clinton.

But the president's infidelity and the major snowstorm made little difference to Kristen Gilbert. All she could do was sit in her cell and wonder what the hell had been going on in the courtroom for the last twelve days. A narcissist, the attention the trial had brought Gilbert was more than she could have ever imagined. Reporters were constantly sticking microphones and cameras in her face as she was escorted away from the courtroom, and, as she would tell a friend later that week, she “loved every minute of it.”

“Can you believe that [TV news anchor] was chasing me down like that?” Gilbert, laughing, told a friend over the phone one day.

Harry Miles, on the other hand, had his hands full with trying to defend his client. The evidence Welch had presented was devastating. Gilbert looked guilty as hell.

Miles's cross of Plante on the morning of January 20 turned out to be a bust. It hadn't yielded much of anything that would sway the jury one way or the other if, in fact, one or more of them were sitting on the fence.

After Plante left the stand, Welch indicated that he had one more witness: Glenn Gilbert. Glenn had already testified. But since he was the only one who had “confirmed” Gilbert's voice on the now infamous “sped-up” tape Welch had made in his office on the Sunday before the trial, Welch needed him back to explain it to the jury. Judge Ponsor had stated earlier that Glenn couldn't testify about the tape until after Bruce Koenig testified.

So here he was.

As the tape played, a chill went through the courtroom. Here was Gilbert's voice, crystal clear, for everyone to hear.

While it was playing, Plante happened to look over at the Stricklands. Gilbert's father's jaw dropped when he heard her voice ring out in the room, while her mother just put her head in her hands and began shaking it, slowly, back and forth.

 

 

Miles had said back at the start of the trial he was going to prove the government had overlooked two possible suspects and targeted his client from day one. He said it was a substandard investigation from the start, and he promised he would fill many holes in the government's case with the truth.

Well, here was his chance.

Miles's witnesses consisted of three police officers who had been summoned to the scene on September 26, 1996, along with VAMC Chief of Security, Timothy O'Donnell. They were there to back up his theory that there had been two additional suspects the government had failed to investigate. Northampton PD Officer Carlos Lebron testified that one suspect was John Noble, a former VAMC patient who had been involved in an incident at the hospital some time ago and had made threats toward hospital staff. Northampton Detective Peter Fappiano testified that the other suspect was a jogger he'd spotted along Route 9, near the hospital, who was using a pay telephone right around the time the bomb threat was called in.

Indeed, the two stories would give the jury a second and third theory to chew on during deliberations. But the case ultimately came down to one vital question: Was it—or was it not—Kristen Gilbert on those tapes the jury had heard in court the past few weeks?

 

 

Closing arguments began on Wednesday, January 21.

Welch addressed the jury at 1:05
P.M.
Before he sat down an hour later, he had made it clear to the jury that Gilbert's “problem was personal.” She chose to phone in the bomb threat to get back at those people who were helping investigators in the murder investigation, thus turning their backs on her.

It was just after two
P.M.
when Welch finished. After a five-minute recess, Miles stood and walked toward the jury.

“Kristen Gilbert was a nurse,” Miles said, “who ran the Sunshine Club . . . who organized the Christmas festivities for the staff . . . a nurse who took care of patients.” Then, in a whisper, Gilbert was “a good nurse,” he said.

Reading part of a letter Gilbert had written to Perrault, where she described how she had watched him one night at the VFW throwing darts, Miles posed a question: “Are these the words of a techno terrorist—or the words of a plaintive woman who loved Jim Perrault?”

Then he broke into his attack on Perrault.

“This is a man who told you that he was a cop wannabe.” He called Perrault and Gilbert's relationship a “paragon of immorality,” questioning Perrault's integrity, motives, and his believability under oath.

“He's an individual without honor, morality, and who's governed by self-interest.”

After that, Miles shifted his focus and laid into SA Plante's desire to find someone responsible for the crimes he had been investigating—because, according to Miles, Plante was “frustrated” that the murder investigation wasn't going anywhere.

“Did they ever try to determine whether Mr. Perrault set this whole thing up with a confidant?”

Welch smiled and shook his head.

By 2:30, Miles was finished.

Judge Ponsor told Welch he had fifteen minutes for his rebuttal.

“Timing was everything,” Welch offered. Plante, he explained, had to make decisions fast. Wherever the leads took him, was where he went. It was like being pulled by a team of horses.

“That's why it's important to look at
all
the evidence . . . build it brick by brick and see how . . .
she”—
he raised his voice and pointed at Gilbert—“could have been the
only
person to have made that call on September 26, 1996, at 5:22
P.M.
”

As Welch turned to walk back toward his table, a final thought occurred to him.

“Don't forget this one iota of evidence,” he shouted. “That Melodie Turner was working on the twenty-sixth and she normally didn't work the evening shift. But on the very day that the bomb threat comes in, Melodie Turner happens to be working . . .
wow
. . . that's a coincidence.” He threw up his hands in disgust. “The one person that she”—he pointed again at Gilbert, who now had her head bowed as if she were being scolded by a parent—“wants the IGO to investigate is there!

“I'll submit to you that there are two sides to this person. There's the side that her attorney wants to tell you about”—he lowered his voice—“and the side that the evidence told you about.”

Judge Michael Ponsor handed the case over to the jury at 3:01
P.M.
, on Tuesday, January 20, 1998. Three days later, the jury weighed in.

At 10:17, on January 23, Ponsor addressed the courtroom. He said he didn't want any jubilation at the reading of the verdict. “Act,” he said, “in a dignified manner.”

Gilbert's parents held hands as the foreperson stood.

“Guilty.”

After each member of the jury was polled, Ponsor excused them.

With the jury gone, Ponsor said that there was a pressing matter at hand.

“[T]here are a couple of . . . issues that have come up—very serious issues—with regard to the defendant's conditions of release given the guilty finding, and we're going to have to take up those issues . . . [after] I have a chance to talk to the jury.”

He ordered Gilbert to remain seated.

Fifteen minutes later, after personally thanking each member of the jury, Ponsor was back on the bench, ready to do battle with Welch and Miles concerning where Gilbert would spend her days and nights pending her sentencing.

“I have concern in two areas,” Ponsor began. “One of them relates to a complaint or report that has been placed on your desk from Alan Chipman, who is the home confinement specialist for this court.”

With the exception of the attorneys, this was news to almost everyone in the courtroom. According to the report, Gilbert, while under house arrest at her parents' home in Long Island, had “tampered” with her electronic anklet, a thick rubber band-like apparatus, similar-looking to a donut, that slides over a defendant's ankle.

On Monday, January 5, the first official day of the trial, Gilbert's anklet had been removed. But as the officer removed the anklet, she noticed something strange. It looked as though it had been picked at with some type of sharp object. So it was sent off to the New York Office of Pretrial Services for examination.

On January 22 it was confirmed that the anklet showed “clear signs of an attempt of tampering, including a penny that had been taped to the inside of [it].”

The only conclusion that could be made from the evidence was that Gilbert had tried to pry the anklet off and, worried she might have broken the copper wire that runs through the center of it keeping a continuous electrical current, taped a penny to the inside of it to try to maintain the current. The Uniondale, New York, office responsible for monitoring Gilbert while she was at her parents' home, confirmed it had “frequent problems maintaining monitoring of the defendant . . .”

This new problem, coupled with the fact that Gilbert's “emotional fragility” was an issue throughout the entire trial, worried the judge, he said.

“. . . I'm concerned that she receives proper evaluation and care pending sentencing and pending the commencement of what may even be an even more stressful period in her life.” Furthermore, Ponsor added, he worried what she might do now that her fate for the bomb threat had been sealed.

Welch argued that Gilbert's crime was a crime of violence. She should be “mandatorily detained,” he said. “My argument is that she . . . [be] placed on suicide watch, and that she does receive [a] psychiatric evaluation . . .”

Welch was frightened for the safety of his witnesses, particularly Samantha Harris and James Perrault. He was afraid of what Gilbert might do now that she had heard Perrault and Harris testify against her. Welch added that he had presented to the court a history of violence by Gilbert “towards ex-boyfriends.” He told the story of what Gilbert had said to Karen Abderhalden back in August 1996, regarding Perrault loving her cats more than her and how she would have them put to sleep and placed on his doorstep.

“You had to spell it out as clearly as you possibly could that when you meant she would have no contact with anyone, that meant no telephone contact, that meant no contact by mail—
that meant no contact with anyone,”
Welch, raising his voice, insisted.

Judge Ponsor, after hearing arguments from both sides, decided to detain Gilbert at the Hampshire County Jail while she awaited sentencing.

 

 

Nearly a year and a half after she'd committed the bomb-threat crime, Gilbert was brought for sentencing before Judge Ponsor on April 20, 1998.

For most of the day, Welch and Miles argued back and forth on many issues, ranging from Gilbert's sanity at the time of the bomb threat to her mental decline throughout the entire ordeal.

“Your Honor,” Miles interjected at one point, “Mr. Strickland requests permission to speak to the Court with the Court's permission?”

“All right,” Ponsor said. “Will we be hearing from the defendant, [too]?”

“Yes, we will. Briefly,” Miles said.

The room was abuzz. Gilbert, who had uttered publicly only two words since the day she was arrested—“Not guilty”—would finally say something.

But it was Daddy's turn first.

Overweight and noticeably stressed, Richard Strickland stared at Bill Welch the entire time he got up and walked from his seat to the chair on the witness stand.

“We're law-abiding citizens,” Strickland said after offering his appreciation to the judge. “I don't think anyone in our family has ever had anything more than a speeding ticket in forty or fifty years, so we don't condone my daughter's actions. . . .”

Next he went through his family's ties to government throughout the centuries, while Welch sat and wondered what the hell any of it had to do with Gilbert's sentencing.

Strickland then spoke of Tara, Gilbert's sister, and her “aspirations” of joining the FBI.

“I will say that the recent experience in the family has soured her on the federal justice system”—he was looking directly at Welch—“for a variety of reasons, and she's taken another path in her career.”

Strickland said his daughter's behavior was “bizarre over a period . . . but [it started only when] she walked out and split with her husband. [H]e refused to participate in [marriage] counseling, and only after she walked out was
he
willing to change. We tried to get her to move into our home perhaps in late spring '96 because we knew she was out of control.

“There were a few other facts that never came into evidence during the course of [the] proceeding, and . . . I don't know the rules of evidence, but I understand that there are rules, but the stresses were even more.”

He was referring to the testimony of Dr. Ronald Winfield, the director of the Greater Lowell Psychiatric Services and a defense witness Miles had brought in earlier, during sentencing arguments. Dr. Winfield testified that Gilbert suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and committed the bomb threat under the influence of that disorder.

After that, Strickland explained how Gilbert's disability insurance had been suddenly cut off in the middle of July 1996, and she stopped receiving disability payments shortly thereafter.

“. . . [S]he couldn't get her disability attorney, and to this day can't get the federal government to answer why. They won't even answer her phone calls or letters. It seems suspicious, to be honest, and I think it was induced to put stress on her.”

Welch was having a ball listening to Strickland blame him and his office for just about everything that had happened in Gilbert's life. The fact of the matter was, Gilbert's disability payments had been cut off because she could not return to work, and the VA was left with nowhere to place her.

“I think a lot of this was circumstances beyond her control,” Strickland said shortly before he was finished. “I'm not saying that she was guiltless—certainly not. And I'm not trying to make an excuse for that. But the circumstances, unlike what Mr. Welch has said, that this is a lifelong history of behavior.... This person is anything but a lifelong criminal.”

With that, Gilbert stood and bowed her head. Crying, she said, “I'd just like to say that I'm very sorry for what happened. And as Dr. Winfield testified, I really don't have a very clear memory of that particular time period and, actually, that's sort of growing over time.

“I don't really have a very clear memory except bits and pieces of really that whole summer, patches here and there. It was a very stressful, hectic time of my life. Sometimes, it seems the mind chooses to block out things we don't want to remember. A lot of what I remember is what people have told me about my own behavior, and my own behavior was very erratic and whatever.

“I would never intentionally hurt anyone. And I have no animosity towards anybody that testified here or anybody involved in the case at all.

“I would really just like to move on with my life and see my children, and remind the court that in addition to my fifteen-month confinement, that you had also ordered therapy during that time, and I went every week. I never missed an appointment, and I utilized it.

“I think it's . . . you know—” She stopped talking to catch her breath. “I'm a little nervous right now, but I think it's certainly helped me deal with everything that was happening at that time, and I just hope you take all that into consideration.”

“Thank you,” Judge Ponsor said. “If you have any final words, Mr. Welch, I will hear from you now?”

“I do not.”

So it was: Richard Strickland's accusations that the government had had it out for his daughter from the start, Gilbert's own testimony that she was under such severe emotional distress at the time of the bomb threat that she had no idea what she was doing, nor Harry Miles's weak argument that Welch and his bandits had railroaded his client did little to sway Judge Ponsor—because he imposed a sentence of fifteen months.

“It is customary to stand during sentencing, but I'm going to make a couple of remarks, and then I'm going to formally impose the sentence,” Ponsor said.

Now it was the judge's turn to speak.

Ponsor first told the court that he didn't “consider this in any sense a light sentence at all.” He recommended that Gilbert be placed in the Bureau of Prisons mental health program. It would allow her to, he said, continue “to make progress” with the therapeutic work she had been doing ever since she became part of the justice system back in 1996.

“There are aspects of this case which, frankly, from the beginning have mystified me more than any case I could think of. There are certain parts of the case that I simply don't understand. A judge is always riding along the tip of an iceberg and never is completely sure of what's going on underneath the water. But in this case there seems to have been more going on beneath the water than I could acknowledge.

“I don't understand what's going on in Ms. Gilbert's background or what happened here. I
do
know that the defendant was proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and that the evidence at trial was overwhelming on that point.

“Only one or two realities is possible, and one is that the defendant is, despite having been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the victim of the most extraordinary series of coincidences that I've ever heard of in my life or in fiction because the evidence was certainly there.”

That line received a few laughs from the packed courtroom.

“The other possibility is that the defendant is, in fact, guilty and did make those phone calls. And if the defendant is, in fact, guilty . . . it absolutely mystifies me that there was no plea or formal acceptance of responsibility and the possibility of a better shot at showing aberrant behavior which would have lowered the potential sentence. So there's an aspect of this case which is an utter mystery to me.

“I do not understand how the case ended up in the format that it did, but in any event, it did. And I'm very satisfied in my own mind that the defendant committed the crimes that she's charged with and was certainly properly found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of those crimes.”

 

 

The first phase of Gilbert's criminal life was over. The second phase, however, was just heating up.

Yet as Welch, Murphy and Plante would find out in the coming months, Gilbert would be hard-pressed to stay out of trouble—even while confined to her cell at the Danbury, Connecticut, Federal Prison that would be her home for the next fifteen months.