Perfect Victim (19 page)

They had positive identification, the most significant piece of evidence against Hooker yet.

Later that same day, she received an unexpected phone call from Colleen. In contrast to Janice, Colleen didn’t sound as coherent as she had in prior conversations.

She’d called, first of all, because she’d read in the Riverside paper about some recent rulings concerning the Hooker case: that Defense Attorney Papendick had filed a change-of-venue motion, that he intended to file for dismissal of the charges, and that the initial February 20 trial date had been vacated.

Mcguire tried to reassure her. “Those are just technical motions. Nothing surprising and nothing really to worry about. But I’ll try to get a new trial date set as soon as possible so that we can get through this and you can put it all behind you.”

As they talked, Mcguire got the impression that nearly every area of Colleen’s life was in upheaval, that she had problems at work, that she had serious financial troubles.

The best that Mcguire could do to help was to tell her about California’s Victim Assistance Program, under which Colleen could apply for compensation for lost wages and counseling. “I’ll put the application forms in the mail today,” she promised, adding that she would contact the Victim Witness Program for her.

As she hung up, Mcguire frowned. She was worried about Colleen’s evident lack of enthusiasm for seeking professional help.

Counseling, it seemed to the DA, was exactly what Colleen needed.

Her mental state seemed shaky, and her voice was dull and listless.

If Colleen didn’t find some means for healing her emotional wounds, Mcguire believed she could have serious and lasting problems.

Mcguire was also troubled to learn that Colleen had spoken to an attorney about filing a civil suit against Cameron Hooker.

This seemed futile, even ludicrous. Hooker had no money.

It may have seemed like nonsense to Mcguire, but Colleen was serious about it. All the Deputy DA could do was advise her that filing a civil suit might make her vulnerable under crossexamination. If she were asked on the stand whether she had filed a civil suit and the amount of damages she was seeking, Papendick could make it seem she had a financial motive to lie.

Shortly after her talk with Colleen, Mcguire received a call from the attorney that Colleen had spoken to. He said that he’d already been retained, though this wasn’t what Colleen had told her. In fact, the attorney called Colleen by another name and generally gave Mcguire the impression that he knew little about the case. Despite this obvious lack of knowledge, he seemed eager to get on with the suit.

Mcguire felt he was proceeding in a reckless manner and was rather brusque with him. “We’re talking about involuntary conversion, victimology, and captivity syndromes here, and if you don’t understand those terms, you may be doing your client more harm than good,” she told him. Moreover, she emphasized that a suit against Hooker could be used against Colleen during the criminal prosecution.

In the end, the attorney said he would hold off on a suit until the verdict on the criminal charges was in.

This entire interlude left Mcguire feeling unsettled. She had no control over what Colleen or her attorney might do, but it seemed all too possible that she could jeopardize her own case.

By chance, Mcguire learned of a child molestation case that was lost because the jury, try as they might, could not reconstruct the crime described to them. They concluded that it was physically impossible and the “victim” was lying.

This reinforced the Deputy DA’s belief that it was crucial that the jury in the Hooker case be able to reenact the crime. So she sent Lieutenant Brown more “honey-do” memos, asking that the bed and box be reconstructed. She determined to try out Colleen’s prison to make sure it worked.

On the afternoon of February 6, Lt. Jerry Brown arranged to have the box and bedframe set up in the squad room so the box could be tried out. The reconstruction of the large frame and coffinlike box created quite a scene. Various officers wandered in and out, commenting on the strange apparatus, stopping to watch its assembly if they had time, offering a joke or two before moving on.

Once it was assembled, the first person to get into the box was the dogcatcher (or, more properly, the Animal Control Officer), Don Herrmann, a big, broad-shouldered man weighing 250 pounds.

“I got in the box to see if I’d fit,” he recalls, chuckling. “It’s small, I’ll tell you that.”

He did fit, albeit snugly. But when they put the lid on he was stuck. He couldn’t turn over.

A call went up for someone of about Colleen’s size to try it out, so Jerry Brown fetched Janell Begbie, a meter maid. She agreed to climb in and found that she could turn over with the lid on, though with difficulty.

Then Christine Mcguire wanted to try it to understand how it worked, how it felt to be shut inside.

At five feet two and about one hundred pounds, the prosecutor was the smallest person to try the box yet. She climbed in and lay down. The officers placed the wooden top over her.

“When they put the lid over me, I felt the sensory deprivation,” Mcguire said later. “I felt like I was in a coffin, though I was surrounded by the reassuring words of police officers and other onlookers at the time.” And even as unnerving as this was, Mcguire realized that when Colleen was in the box it had been caulked — there would be no air and no light seeping in around the edges.

Mcguire wanted to demonstrate that all elements of what Colleen claimed had been her environment were operational.

Officer Roger Marsh was sent off to the Tehama County Health Center to pick up a bedpan, and someone went out to the property room where evidence was stored to get the sleeping bag.

These were the meager comforts afforded Colleen, and with their addition, the attorney climbed back into the box. She wanted to make sure that using a bedpan in the box was feasible. In a prone position, she hiked it up under her backside. Then, using her hands and then her legs, she removed it to the end of the box. Awkward, but practicable.

Finally, she wanted to enter the box as Colleen had, through the opening at the foot of the bed. Prior to this, everyone had been entering the easy way, through the top, where the waterbed mattress would have been. Now, with the wooden top in place, Christine crawled in through the small opening at the foot of the bed and wiggled her way into the box. She ran her stockings, but was able to enter and exit without any problem.

At the time, this whole experiment lent itself to comedy: the squad room almost completely occupied by an awkward, wooden framework, the little, smartly dressed Deputy DA climbing in and out, police officers ambling in to sip coffee, watch, and exchange lively banter. But later Mcguire reflected that this nervous levity had only partially masked an underlying unease. Beneath the humor lurked the ugly realization that the box was genuine. This was no joke.

Dr. Chris Hatcher was retained late in January. From the beginning, he impressed Mcguire with his gung-ho attitude and how quickly he absorbed information about the case. First, he requested a copy of the three-hundred page preliminary hearing transcript, then asked for copies of police reports, and now he was asking to come to Red Bluff to take a firsthand look at scenes of the crime. He wanted to review the evidence, peruse Hooker’s reading material, and interview Janice.

After that, he would interview Colleen in Riverside.

When Hatcher first walked into police headquarters, Mcguire was relieved to see that the expert whom she’d feared was “too slick” was casually dressed in slacks and a sports coat.

After introductions, they drove with Lieutenant Brown to the Hooker residence. Without a search warrant they could only circle the empty mobile home. Dr. Hatcher paced its width and length, asking where the master bedroom would be, where the children slept, where the bathrooms were. Then he scrutinized the sheds.

After learning what they could, they headed back to the police station to review the evidence. The head box was pulled from the clutter in the property room. Originally seized from one of Hooker’s sheds, it was dusty and littered with mouse droppings.

Hatcher picked it up, opened and closed it. “It’s in a dilapidated condition — the neck holes don’t even line up. It ought to be reconstructed, if possible, so that it’s clear how it works.”

“That’s a good idea. I don’t know why we didn’t think of that,” Mcguire said. A usable head box would help the jury understand the sensory deprivation it caused.

They reviewed an array of items — the whips, handcuffs, and hooks; the S/M sketches Cameron had drawn; and the disassembled bed and box where Colleen had been confined. Hatcher asked how Colleen handled urination and defecation in the box, what the temperature would have been during the summer, what sorts of punishments she was subjected to. They went through a seemingly endless collection of slides and photos, mostly of Janice, since virtually all of those of Colleen had been destroyed. Looking closely, Dr. Hatcher pointed out whip marks on Janice’s body that Mcguire had never noticed before.

It wasn’t difficult to see how Hooker got ideas for some of his equipment and techniques. Going through boxes of seized pornography, Hatcher suggested they be cataloged in terms of those having to do with slaves and masters, kidnapping, mind control, bondage, and sadomasochism. Cameron’s collection was replete with such material. And Hatcher underscored the importance of these publications by suggesting they be combed for specific information which Hooker might have applied in his treatment of Colleen.

Mid-morning, Christine Mcguire’s husband, District Attorney Jim Lang, brought their baby daughter to the police station. It was Christine’s turn to take care of her while he played his Saturday golf game, so now she carried eight-month-old Nicole around with her as she, Dr. Hatcher, and Lieutenant Brown went through the evidence. Pouring through it, Mcguire was oblivious to the contrast she created: mother with babe in arms against a backdrop of hardcore pornography and bondage equipment.

Later that afternoon Hatcher interviewed Janice, then wanted to examine the basement of 1140 Oak Street.

It was Mcguire’s first visit to this particular scene of the crime — a cold, dark, damp, gray room. Until now, she’d only seen photographs, and she was stunned to find it so small. Breathing the musty air, she struggled to imagine the box, the rack, and the workshop all jammed into this meager space. It seemed inconceivable that anyone could have been imprisoned here.

Brown pointed out marks beneath the stairs where the workshop had been. “This is glue,” he said, pointing to light-colored lines running across the cement. “It’s like an outline. It shows where the workshop was glued to the wall.”

They stared and murmured. It was tiny. Like a broom closet.

A claustrophobe’s nightmare. Yet Colleen Stan claimed to have spent hundreds of hours in this cramped little corner, working on crafts through the dead hours of night.

Back at the police station, they said their farewells and Hatcher prepared to depart. It had been a brief visit, but the psychologist had managed to refocus the investigation, initiating an important turn in its direction.

As he was leaving, Mcguire asked, “What do you think, Doctor, now that you’ve had a chance to view the evidence and talk to Janice?”

“I’d rather not give you an opinion until I’ve had a chance to talk to Colleen and digest everything,” he said, “but I will say this case exceeds common fantasy, and it’s far beyond any typical B and D or S/M relationship.”

At about nine o’clock on the morning of March 8, Mcguire walked into the Tehama County Courthouse and climbed the wide marble staircase that sweeps up to the second floor, every footfall echoing through the halls and into the courtrooms. Here, she was in her element. She relished her work, and this morning she was looking forward to getting a favorable ruling on the Hooker case.

attorneys Mcguire and Papendick had been asked to meet with Judge Watkins in advance of a scheduled hearing on the change-of-venue motion. Mcguire arrived to find the nattily dressed and always confident Papendick already waiting in a leather chair.

Judge Watkins, a fair-skinned man in his fifties, with a shock of red hair, a concerned look on his face, and a cigarette in his hand, greeted them and spread a copy of the previous night’s Daily News across his desk. “Crime Expenses Could Bankrupt Tehama County,” declared the front-page headline. Christine had already read the article, which warned of the financial consequences of prosecuting four major and expensive criminal cases — most notably the Hooker case.

The judge felt the article made it inappropriate for him to hear the change-of-venue motion. “If I don’t grant it,” he said, “the inference will be that I was influenced by concern over the cost of an out-of-county trial.”

With Judge Watkins thus disqualifying himself, a visiting judge, Stanley Young, would have to step in to hear the case.

Judge Young, whom Judge Watkins had already spoken to, was close at hand, and as soon as arrangements were made, both counsels left to take their seats in the courtroom.

The media was already there, and when Hooker was brought in, looking thin but well-groomed, a ripple went through the courtroom. Mcguire noticed that he seemed cool and collected, unfazed by all the attention, and at one point even appeared to turn and pose for the cameras. His family sat behind him, and he smiled and chatted with them before the court was brought to order.

Papendick presented a convincing collection of newspaper clippings, showing that local coverage had been so extensive that it was unlikely many people in the county were unfamiliar with the case. This, he said, jeopardized Hooker’s chance of getting a fair trial.

When it was Mcguire’s turn to rebut his argument, she simply said, “We’ll submit it, Your Honor,” leaving it up to the judge.

She still thought Papendick was making a mistake. Hooker was a local boy, with a job and general lifestyle that people here could relate to, whereas Colleen Stan was an outsider, and therefore suspect. For the most part, the people of Tehama County were absolutely incredulous of the charges against Hooker. And her husband and Hatcher had both agreed that jurors in a more urban locale would be more likely to understand psychological explanations, coercion, captivity syndromes, and the ticklish issue of why Colleen hadn’t escaped when she’d had the opportunity.