Synopsis - Do Unto Them ...
DO UNTO THEM … is a Chronicle of Injustice and Retribution. Genre: Slow burning adult literary crime fiction, a dialogue rich, dark urban noir, legal and police procedural, medical-legal forensics, courtroom dramas, psychological suspense and tension, lesbian erotica and, yes, some humor.
San Francisco, 1985-86. Terri Donnell is a forty-five-year-old mannish lesbian lawyer, female anti-hero, who appreciates women as lovers, having given up on men. Terri works as a trial lawyer in a special unit of the San Francisco Public Defender’s office dedicated to representing neglected and abused children who have been legally removed from their parents for cause and come under the supervision of the children’s court. The court appoints Terri, and other lawyers in her office, as a child’s lawyer when the state files court cases against their parents and their “caretakers” – daddies mostly, but mommies too, and mommies’ boyfriends, granddaddies, and the “Uncle Harrys” of the world, a cesspool brimming with piss poor protoplasm. Terri works in the secret world of children’s court, closed to the public and the media. She is sworn to uphold the rule of law but through much soul searching and internal monologues she navigates toward action; killing or maiming the three perpetrators of crimes against her young clients who had no available legal remedy.
_______________
TRIGGER WARNINGS. This story is not for the squeamish or the faint of heart; it is for readers whose tastes run to exploring evils that lie beneath the veneer of an ostensibly normal society. The violence described in the story is not gratuitous but integral to the context and subject matter. The reader will encounter emotional and physical abuse of children by their parents; a father’s sexual abuse of his young son causing his psychological breakdown; details of the medical examination of the son’s injures when he is first brought to the attention of doctors; the son’s suicide after the judge in his case orders him to visit with his father; drug addicted parents who sell their young twins to sex traffickers for drugs; animal torture by a neighborhood boy witnessed by Terri’s adult neighbor and reported to Terri; discovery of the murdered corpse of a notorious sexual sadist after he is released from prison; depictions of Terri’s grisly acts of vengeance (one by proxy) against the perpetrators of crimes against her clients.
In plot and form, the story is not a ‘who done it,’ but deals, instead, with why and how Terri ‘does it.’ The story is first person POV, which unfolds in real time. The technique is intended to add verisimilitude and authenticity to what can be read as a ‘confessional.’ The narrative thread draws on a blend of actual and imagined events including Terri’s acquaintance
(only slightly fictionalized) with the Zodiac, the serial killer who, unknown to Terri, terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late Sixties and whose crimes would have been known to Terri only through the media.
Terri’s emotional side: music is her narcotic for dealing with the horrors she has seen in her work; soothing German art songs, poetry set to music, of the nineteenth century Romantic era – music for ecstatic, escapist dreams. (Lyrics in English occur at appropriate places in the text.)
Terri’s love life: On a visit to the Porcelains Room of the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, Terri finds the love of her life, Adelaide, who shares her passion for music (lieder of Franz Schubert and Gustav Mahler). The song cycle that most resonates with her work, is Kindertotenlieder, Songs on the Death of Children, by Gustav Mahler.
AUTHOR’S NOTE AND AFTERWORD
As a lawyer representing neglected and abused children, I have witnessed and sometimes prevented, horrible physical and emotional damage to children. I have also witnessed the legal system and its representatives, including lawyers and judges, failing to protect vulnerable children. I have drawn on this experience in writing Do Unto Them …
Where I have borrowed from actual events, the names and identifying details have been changed and disguised, except for my friendship with Arthur Leigh Allen, who was never caught and who was not identified as Zodiac until 1993, a few years after his death. A full treatment of my acquaintance with Leigh Allen is in the AFTERWORD.
Writing this story has not proved cathartic; it has merely allowed me to vent a measure of frustration and anger and to explore the lurid fantasies that my experience spawned.
Excerpt - Do Unto Them ...
Ch. 1. JOEL (Partial)
I arrive late to my office after a sublime night with my most recent lover, the exotic, delicious
Zara, ten years my junior, after too much wine and a little weed to enhance the erotic. I try to slip
into my office without my boss noticing. I glance at my nameplate on my desk, which always
thrills me: Terri Donnel, Senior Lawyer. I’m the senior lawyer not just because of my age,
forty-five, but by virtue of merit and hard work in my unit, working harder and longer hours than
my colleagues, often on weekends and during nights at home. I work in a special unit of San
Francisco’s justice system, attached to the public defender’s office, the secret world of children’s
court, representing neglected and abused children in court cases brought against their parents or guardians. Many lawyers here burn out fast because of the horrors they’ve seen. I’m still here
twenty years after I started.
My managing attorney, Jim Gerhard, doesn’t see me sneak in, but he’s not far behind. Just as I’ve settled behind my desk, he enters without knocking and unceremoniously hands me a thin file and tells me that I’m Joel’s new lawyer in the abuse case against his mother and her new husband, and says there’s a hearing in four days, then leaves as abruptly as he entered. The
expectation that I know what I’m doing without guidance is part of being a senior attorney.
I scan the file. Joel is a bi-racial thirteen-year-old, white mother, black father. He’s a ward
of the court. I’m the fourth lawyer handling Joel’s case over a period of four months since
children’s protective services (CPS) removed Joel from his home and took emergency legal
custody of him. The four lawyers the court had assigned to his case had not bothered to meet
with him. Each one of them had begged Jim to remove them from the case. Too complicated.
They should be fired. I wonder if Joel even knows he has a lawyer.
Joel is mentally ill and always will be. He suffers from what child protection professionals euphemistically call “emotional disorders.”
I read Joel’s legal file. It tells only part of his story. His mother’s new husband took Joel
to the garage and, with mommy watching, stripped him naked and beat him with a leather belt,
raising welts all over his back, buttocks, and legs. Joel ran away from home right after the
beating. The police picked him up three days later when he was caught shoplifting food at a
convenience store. At an emergency court hearing, CPS social workers and their lawyer easily
persuaded the judge that Joel was a danger to himself or others and met the legal standard for
ordering temporary involuntary commitment to a psychiatric facility for evaluation. The judge
made the finding based on Joel’s having fought with the cops, grabbing for their guns, and trying to get himself killed. Joel is now housed in a secure residential treatment center (RTC) for
emotionally disturbed children who are a risk to themselves or others.
I don’t see details in the file about Joel’s illness or his treatment, telling me that his
former lawyers hadn’t bothered to find out. He’s now my responsibility. I have a low tolerance
for failure, so I’m determined to help this kid.
Ch. 2. JOEL'S COURT HEARING
At the RTC, I show my credentials to the security guard at the entrance before I’m
admitted to the administration area. I have an appointment with Joel’s psychiatrist, Dr. Gene
Davis. I’ve worked with him before on other cases. Dr. Davis is a seasoned professional, a
Board-Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, respected by his colleagues, judges, lawyers
appointed by the court to represent indigent parents and guardians charged with abuse and
neglect, and children’s lawyers like me and my colleagues in my office. His diminutive stature
belies his reputation. He’s the best shrink for disturbed kids I’ve ever worked with. And he’s a
great expert witness at trials involving my clients. He’s in his fifties, already greying, no doubt
from the pressure of his work and the horrors he’s seen; the wasted potential of young lives
destroyed by inhumane treatment at the hands of parents or guardians who were supposed to love and nurture their children but abused them instead.
I open the door, squeeze into Dr. Davis’ cubicle, and sit in the only guest chair. Floor to
ceiling racks filled with case files climb three sides of his office. On his crowded desk, Dr. Davis
has Joel’s medical file, already about three inches thick.
“Joel’s in the rubber room,” Dr. Davis begins. “A protective time out. He assaulted a staff
member this morning and had to be restrained. Before that, he stood on a table in the dining
room yelling obscenities at nurses and other residents for about thirty minutes.”
“Will I be able to see him today?” I ask.
“Yes, but only after you appreciate what you’re dealing with. He’s expecting you. We
told him earlier today, before his outburst, that you were coming.”
“Did Joel say anything when he heard I was coming here today?”
“He sure did. He yelled ‘It’s about fucking time! I been in here four months and no
lawyer.’ That’s when he jumped on the table. You’ve got your work cut out for you, counselor.
Just getting him to talk to you, much less building trust in you, will be one helluva challenge.”
Dr. Davis launches into Joel’s case history. “Here’s the short version. Diagnosis: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Reactive
Attachment Disorder. These are heavyweights when they come in couples. Flashbacks of abuse
and inability to trust or form relationships. No surprise.
Ch. 14. EVENTS THAT GUIDED ME TO ACT
Guidance from my mother. (All)
[This is one part of a group of separate named events influencing my
subsequent actions.]
Later that evening I’m still home recalling my “friend’s” second letter. I drift into a light
slumber; a half-asleep, half-conscious dream in which I’m both observer and participant.
I hear my mother’s voice, still with me years after she and my father were killed by a
drunk driver. She senses the nature of my quandary and in typical fashion she goes to the heart of the problem. “She ‘asks’ me, “What would your great granddaddy do?” Her question is the
portal into my dream. She asks, “What would Old John Trigg do, Terri?”
I have a photograph of my great-grandfather, Dr. John Trigg Gilmore in old age. It drifts
up and forms in my mind. I remember my mother once telling me that “he looked like an old
Bible prophet, a lot like old John Brown, though he’d roll in his grave if he heard the
comparison.”
Her voice continues. “I was a little girl, and he was very old when I saw him just one
time before he died. The first thing I noticed was the whiskers, long and full like a straw broom,
once all red I’m told, like a big flame, but gone to the color of smoke when I saw them. Next
were his eyes, like torchlights. He’d raise them sleepy old, hooded lids and look right through
me. And his lips, thin and tight as a lizard’s skin. Old John was a man of no nonsense. He’d been
a Confederate battlefield surgeon.”
When she was alive, I loved to hear my mother reminisce about her people and times so
far removed that her telling felt like a story about an ancient and alien race. To keep her talking, I teased and coaxed myself back into my twilight dream. “Old John,” I remember her telling me when I was a child, “he was Virginia born between the two rebellions, Terri. He got restless, went west to Mississippi, buried a wife and child there in Amite County, moved on to Gainesville, became a Texan. He met and married a Creole lady from Louisiana. A pillar of the community was Old John. He was a doctor and, a Church of Christ preacher of the southern branch, and a schoolteacher. And a Rebel stalwart to boot. One night when he was living in Gainesville, Texas, a man named John Cottrell called on him. Dr. John invited him in. It’s 1862, mind you, and Cottrell is a fugitive seeking sanctuary from a military tribunal seeking Union sympathizers who were plotting to overthrow the Confederate government in Texas. Later, granddaddy was called as a witness to unmask his guest as one of a bunch of conspirators. They all got a trial, a military trial, but there wasn’t any appeal. Cottrell and about forty others were hanged in what folks named the Great Hanging of Gainesville. Those were men back then, Mothers says, and when their country was threatened, they took care of business. And you know if the family or any member of the community was hurt or threatened, there wouldn’t have been a trial.”
Mother’s image fades, then returns. She’s in front of me again, just staring at me and
waiting. I know that what I’ll say to her is conditioned by learning, by higher education and law
school, not based on instinct, and not grounded in any of the family’s traditions. I also know that
I’m going to embarrass myself by what I say back to her in my dream.
“Mom, great granddaddy lived a long time ago when things were a lot simpler. Towns
were smaller, people closer, life raw. If there was a threat, you knew it, could see it, could deal
with it – directly and without interference. Things are more complicated now.”
“Principles don’t get so complicated they don’t exist anymore,” she answers. “The only
thing that’s got more complicated is the way folks go about the business of taking care of
business.”
“What do you mean?”
“Should be pretty obvious to a smart girl like you.”
I feel the blush of embarrassment.
“Just two things, pretty obvious,” she begins. “Number one is the laws are too complicated, one big crazy quilt. Bad people get lost or forgotten about, and normal people can’t
even see it happening. Number two, the so-called good guys, the law makers, all lawyers, built
deadfalls all over that maze of laws, but the deadfalls only help the bad guys. When one of those deadfalls hits a bad guy, a lawyer comes along and cuts him loose and sends him on his way. But when one of those deadfalls hits a good guy, an innocent, he must get out all by himself and start all over again. Sometimes the good guy gets thrown clean out of the game and the bad guy just flat out wins. When that happens, the law, the so-called good guy lawyers and the judges just say, ‘sorry,’ and blame it on the system. But what do I know? I’m no lawyer. You’re the educated one. I didn’t go past the sixth grade." Her voice resumes. “My brother, your uncle Roy, used to talk about the bad people he’d met in his life: killers and rapists who never got punished, and it made him sick to his stomach. He talked about getting some good old boys together for what he called a ‘ping squad’, men who could grab their squirrel rifles and go hunting. Now, your uncle Roy was a tough old boot who could do that sort of thing if he set his mind to it. Guess he just didn’t get around to it before he died, but he sure did talk a lot about it. All the bad he’d seen bothered him.”
Ch. 40. MUSIC AND ECSTASY
After visiting Joe, I return to the city in time for a light supper and a lieder recital. Herbst Recital
HalI, the heart’s beat, a sacre coeur of the city where music lovers gather to embrace an older
form of love from a different time and foreign place. Built in 1915, adjacent to the Opera House,
it is an integral part of the War Memorial Performing Arts Center. The Center is a magnificent,
harmonious blend of neo-classical and beaux-arts architecture, a fitting monument to the glorious City by the Bay.
I’m with my latest and, I hope, lasting love, Adelaide (Adel-i-eeda), named by her
parents to honor her after Beethoven’s lovely lied. She hates being called Adel – too midwestern
and ninetieth century American. She settles for Leida. Leida is not much younger than me. Not a lawyer. Much more than a lawyer I’ve discovered. As we wait for the performance, I fondly recall how we met. We were separately visiting the Porcelains Room at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, a steward of French art, overlooking the headlands of the Pacific. Outside, Summer in San Francisco, as fog rolled in, gigantic scoops of vanilla ice cream to a child’s eye. Inside the Porcelains Room, French windows, floor to ceiling, revealed an enchanted landscape, resembling a Japanese print, cypresses set among the rolling lawn, trees leaning eastward against the ocean winds, engulfed in swirling fog sweeping in from the
Pacific.
That day, I was not enchanted by the paintings but only by the porcelains, fascinating in their shapes, glazes, and colors: dining sets, French figurines, myriad vases – each leading me into a meditation on refined artistry. She and I noticed each other as we glided through the Porcelains Room. I was dazzled by her earthy visage. A large mane of black hair cascading to her shoulders in twisting curls, ringlets, glistening as if bathed in oil, her olive skin and aquiline nose,
resembling a dark portrait in a nineteenth century Spanish painting, or an image of an Old Testament heroine. I soon learn that she is Sephardic, Jews from Spain, expelled during the Inquisition, if they were lucky.
Slowly, tentatively, she approached as if drawn like a bee to my honey. I wondered what drew her to me. My butch haircut? My tight blue jeans? My shoe-boots? My old and faded loden Tyrolean jacket? No, she must have felt that I was a woman who appreciated refined art and therefore a woman who must be yearning for loving. I felt an impulse to share this moment with her. Suddenly we stood together before the porcelains. Blues predominated against flowers painted by hand on gleaming white vases, curling vines and couples in risqué tête-à-tête, confined behind glass, beyond our touch. Yet they gleamed for only us. She spoke. She told me that she yearned to consume the visual that filled our senses, to taste the contents long ago consumed or thrown out by privileged Parisians when no longer a sumptuous delight. She moved closer and risked taking my hand in hers. I didn’t withdraw. We smiled knowingly at each other. In that moment we were voluptuaries.
The porcelains were magical but overwhelming. Too much to absorb at one visit.
After an hour we tired. Together, we glowed, feeling luminous, like the porcelains. Our
touch confirming us. Time to go to home.
Leida is both like me and different. We both love and are enchanted by German art songs,
poetry set to music, of the nineteenth century Romantic era. She is Jewish, a cultural Jew, not
religious – nor am I. She is gifted and talented. She has a PhD from Berkeley in art history and
related languages, German, French and Italian. She is the head curator in one of San Francisco’s
leading fine arts museums. She supervises several curators in different areas of the museum’s
collections and was raised in a cosmopolitan home of high-status professionals. Her mother, the
ideal companion for a cultural family – a pediatrician who plays the cello. Her father is a
professor of child oncology at the medical school of the University of California San Francisco.
He plays the grand piano in their home. Leida plays violin and often joins the ensembles.
Chimes signal it’s time to take our seats. From the lobby Leida and I glide the aisle in languorous repose, melt into velvet seats, beguiled beneath constellations of five sparkling of crystal chandeliers suspended from the sky-blue ceiling in grand style of an opulent time long past.
Dress is refined, understated, for traditional musical offerings in the city. My one concession to
style is a flamboyant Jerry Garcia tie. Leida makes no concession to flamboyance, dressed
always as befits the setting, ankle length blue dress, low pumps (never high heels), a fitted dark
blue jacket over a white blouse, her curling black hair pulled back tight against her scalp, clasped at the back behind her neck. She sits close beside me anticipating the music we both love.
I drift into nostalgia. Among the many charms of Herbst Recital Hall, in addition to its intimate
setting, are the murals adorning both sides of the hall. As if for the first time, I’m enchanted by
the murals enhancing the glittering old-world, European aura of the hall. Eight Beaux-Arts
murals, depicting scenes and themes suggestive of man working, playing, and hunting in natural,
communal, primitive, pre-industrial settings. Leida shares my enchantment.
Some have interpreted the murals as depicting the bucolic paradise that was California
before the invasion of the white man. That’s a stretch. All the figures in the murals are white
men, women, children, and domesticated animals. No Indians, no Spanish. The murals were
created by the Welsh painter Frank Brangwyn for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International
Exposition. They were removed after the exposition, restored, and installed in Herbst Hall in
1934. I’m transported back in time, to the era when my father lived and worked in the city,
before and after the earthquake and fire of 1906 (I was a late born child), and long before the
Sixties, when everything loose in the country slid west, the detritus ending up in Los Angeles.
I imagine my father visiting here. I don’t know if he ever did. He never mentioned it. He
did attend the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915. Years ago, my father told me of
his visit to the Exposition. Among my treasures, framed and hanging on the wall of my flat, is
his ticket for the last day of the Exposition. The Palace of Fine Arts is depicted on the face of the
ticket.
Each mural measures 11 feet by 24 feet, although they appear smaller in the setting of the
hall. Each is rounded at the top in the form of an arch, four on each side of the hall, separated by
classical Ionic columns. The murals reflect the style of the Victorian age Pre-Raphaelite school
of painting founded by the English painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti’s art, like
Brandwyn’s, was characterized by medieval revivalism. The murals are gorgeous, an interlaced
fusion of blue, red, yellow and orange. Leida and I, charged by their medieval revivalism, by
their elevation of the female form, evoking eroticism. We smile and snuggle.
The chandeliers dim. Hermann Prey, the famous German opera and lieder baritone,
enters, accompanied by his pianist. He does not disappoint. His performance is effortless. He
sings selections from Shubert and Schumann lieder cycles. His tone is clear and polished, darker
and deeper-sounding than his contemporary, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but equally refined and
equally capable of soaring into the tenor range without the slightest vocal effort. Leida and I
listen, I read the lyrics in the original German and the English translation, as we hear the singing:
One song never fails to entrance and remind us of how fortunate we are. Franz Schubert’s slow,
melodious Nacht und Traume (Night and Dreams). We sit mesmerized, suffused in a reverie.
Leida takes my hand, softly caressing.
Holy night, you sink down;
dreams, too, float down,
like your moonlight through space,
through the silent hearts of men.
They listen with delight,
crying out when day awakes:
come back, holy night!
Fair dreams, return!
This evening should never end. What a contrast to the killing field. At program’s end, I ask,
Where are we? She smiles: Vienna, Fin de Siècle. La Belle Epoch. We leave the hall floating on
Nacht und Traume. It’s raining as we leave, an appropriate accompaniment to our somber mood. Rain, chill evening, combined with songs of human longing and despair.
Upon leaving the recital hall and waiting for our bus, I think of the children who will
never hear, feel the tenderness of these songs, won’t experience any of these pleasures because
their lives have been cut short; because they have been denied the chance to feel any of the
wondrous and valuable experiences that life has to offer.
I ask, Do you want a nosh? Coffee? Fudge cake? No. Home, she re replies. Leida and I
return to my flat in Cow Hollow, drifting into bed, embracing, warm, soft, calm, timid. I pour a
vintage white wine, Sauvignon Blanc. I start my mix of music. First, Adelaide, for Leida; next
Und du wirst mein Gebieter sein, the lush duet from Richard Strass’ opera Arabella; next
Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We jump up and dance wildly around the room, sweating until exhausted, we fall together onto the bed, wrapped in arms tenderly until sleep
smothers us.
Strangely, I reflect on past loves and my current love, Adelaide. I think of the men, boys
really, in my past and the difference between then and now. Men have always found me
attractive. My blonde hair, then long, my full cheeks, my blue eyes, my perfect nose, my long
neck, my firm breasts formed like those in Greek sculptures of the female form, my firm tummy,
my long legs, my full and rounded ass, and the silky curtain between my thighs. Wasted on men.
Love to the men I have known is little more than self-gratifying sex, their proboscises intruding
into my warm cave beyond my silky curtain. There are men who fully appreciate women’s
needs, but I haven’t met any. Women understand instinctively what women want and need.
Intimacy, mutual and reciprocal pleasure, softly caressing the holy sepulture of pleasure sublime,
caressing and kissing the orchid’s pollinia.
Sunlight rouses us, slowly. Warm water cascades -- enfolding.
A different hunger intrudes. A late breakfast, smiling in silence, bagels, lox, cream cheese and
fresh French roast coffee.
I have a full shelf of modern poetry. Leida and I spend the rest of the day reading poetry
aloud to each other, in rota. Leida begins with Yeat’s Sailing to Byzantium. I follow with W. H.
Auden’s In Memory of W. B. Yeats. Leida smiles.
Our reading continues until dinner. We go to a nearby small Italian café in the Marina
District. Linguini in black truffle sauce and white wine, and a small salad graced with olive oil
and balsamic vinegar. Then back to bed to sleep. Tomorrow is another day at work.
Ch. 42. A SURPRISE VISIT FROM THE POLICE.
A week after Joe’s death and Berkowitz’ recent call, Jim knocks on the door to my office and
enters directly.
“Two police detectives here to see you.”
“You know what they want?”
“No, but I suspect it has something to do with your handling Joel’s case and the case of
the Maier kids.”
“Why do you think that?” I ask.
“Because a week ago, the police department sent someone over to get complete copies of
those kids’ files.
“Okay, thanks for the heads up.”
“Anything I should be concerned about?”
“No.”
Jim leaves the door open. The police detectives have done their homework and planned accordingly. They’ve checked the children’s court docket and timed their interview when I’m not in court. The police detectives stand before my door. They produce their credentials and introduce themselves. The detectives are in their forties, seasoned detectives, not youngsters. Be careful. The tall detective says that he’s William Jensen. The short detective says he’s Edward
Estlin.
I ask, “Is there a Cummings attached to your name?”
“What?” the short detective asks.
“Never mind. Private joke.”
“You’re having a private joke about my name?”
I’ve set the tone. The short detective has just gotten defensive, off balance.
“Yeah, but not at your expense, Detective.”
“How do I know your joke is not at my expense?”
“Because it’s not disrespectful. In fact, its complimentary.”
“Okay, so how about you share your private joke with us.”
I bite. “Your first and last name happen to be the initials of a famous American poet, E.E. Cummings.” He spelled his name in lower case, e.e. cummings.
“Never heard of him.”
I’m not surprised, but don’t tell him so. Detective Jensen looks amused, judging from the
half-smile on his face.
“Any relation?”
“Don’t know. Don’t think so.”
“Might want to ask your mother.”
“Yeah, sure, just as soon as I finish re-arranging my sock drawer.”
“You have your priorities, detective. Why are you gentlemen here to see me?”
Detective Jensen now speaks. “We’re here merely to confirm some details from the
record of your representation of the youngster, Joel Sevier, and of the Maier children.”
“Let me be clear, you’re here to confirm some details of the record of my
representation of Joel and the Maier kids?”
“That’s right,” Detective Jensen says.
“Okay, how can I help you?”
Detective Jensen begins, “Confirm that you did, in fact, represent the kids we named.”
“I did. But I was not the first lawyer from this office for Joel. There were three lawyers
before I was assigned to represent him. I was the last. As for the Maier kids, I was the only
lawyer assigned to represent them, from beginning to the end.”
Detective Estlin now speaks. “You must have been very upset with the judge’s ruling that
ordered that Joel’s father get visits with him.”
“Detective Estlin, your question is beyond the scope of why you said you are here to
interview me; to confirm details of the record of the two cases.”
“So, you’re not going to answer my question.”
“No, not only is your question beyond the scope of why you’re interviewing me, it
assumes facts, alleged facts, that not are not part of the case record.”
Detective Jensen gestures to Estlin to back off.
Detective Estlin continues. “Okay, you were Joel’s lawyer when the judge ordered him to
visit his father; the man who molested him.”
“I’ve already answered part of your question about when I represented Joel. As for the
other part of your question, if it is a question, about Joel’s father, you might have noticed from
your review of the case record, that Judge Marone ruled that Joel’s father was legally innocent
because there was no evidence linking him to molesting Joel.”
“Didn’t the judge’s ruling upset you?” Estlin pursues.
“There you go again, Detective.”
“What”
“You’re going beyond the scope …” Again, Detective Jensen gestures to detective Estlin to back off.
“Next question,” I say. Detective Estlin states more than asks, “You were Joel’s lawyer when he committed suicide?”
“Yes. But you already know this from your review …”
“Right,” Detective Jensen says. “From our review of the case record. Okay, now let’s talk
about the Maier kids,
“Okay.”
Detective Estlin interjects, like a dog with a bone. “You must have been mad as hell what
happened to the kids after Judge Marone ordered that they have unsupervised visitation with the
parents.”
“The judge did in fact order an unsupervised visit with the parents. You know this. But
I’m confirming it. Next question.” I see where this is heading; have seen it from Detective Estlin’s first hostile question about how I felt about the judge’s rulings for visits for both Joel’s father and the Maier kids. They’re trying to establish a connection between me and the killing of Joel’s father and the Maier kids’ parents. Good luck with that. Detective Jensen tries. “One last question, Ms. Donnell. Did you ever meet Joe Bennett before he killed the Maier?”
“Nice try, detective. Why don’t you ask Joe?”
“Can’t. He’s dead.”
“Well, there you are.”
“You’re not going to answer my question?”
“Don’t have to.”
“Right. Beyond the scope.”
“Right. Is that all?”
“Yeah, for now,” Detective Jensen says.
“Good day, gentlemen.” The detectives turn to leave.
“Oh, detective Estlin, be sure to ask your mother if you’re related to e.e. cummings.” As Estlin leaves, he gives me the finger.
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