Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, it is.

MR. BURKE: Do you remember signing it?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Not specifically, but I can

MR. BURKE: I'll offer it as People's

MR. JAYWALKER: No objection.

THE COURT: Received. see that I did. It's my hand writing. Eleven.

MR. BURKE: Do you recall who pre sented it to you for your sig nature?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I really don't. It might have been Barry, it might have been Bill Smythe.

MR. BURKE: Did you read it before sign ing it?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I'm sure I didn't. It's, let me see, twenty-two pages long.

MR. BURKE: Did you understand what you were agreeing to?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Basically, yes.

MR. BURKE: And what was that?

MS. TANNENBAUM: That if I ever divorced Barry, I would get abso lutely nothing.

MR. BURKE: Did you believe that to be true?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Sure. I didn't think they'd go and waste twenty-two pages on it if it wasn't.

MR. BURKE: Over the years since, did you ever come to rethink the subject and decide it wasn't true?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No, I've always assumed it was true.

MR. BURKE: Even after eight years of marriage?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes. I figured "ever" meant exactly that.

Nice job, Jaywalker had to admit. Question by question, Burke had painted Samara into a corner. Even though no judge in the world would have strictly enforced a prenup tial agreement after eight years of marriage, Burke had gotten Samara to say that she didn't know that. So as far as she was concerned, divorce wasn't an option, not unless she wanted to be out on the street again. From there, Burke shifted gears and moved on to other avenues by which Samara might hope to end up with a chunk of Barry's money.

MR. BURKE: Did you know anything about your husband's will?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No, I didn't.

MR. BURKE: Do you know anything about wills in general?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I know what a will is.

MR. BURKE: Was it your understanding that if Barry were to die, you'd inherit a fortune?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I didn't know. I mean, I didn't know if that was the case or not.

MR. BURKE: Had you ever heard that under the law, an individual can't disinherit his or her spouse? That even if the individual should try to do that, the spouse would still be entitled to half of the estate? MS. TANNENBAUM: No, I hadn't heard that.

MR. BURKE: So as far as you knew, not only would you have gotten nothing if you divorced Barry, but the same might have been true if he'd died?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I suppose so. I really didn't

MR. BURKE: It didn't interest you?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Not really. spend a lot of time trying to figure out stuff like that.

MR. BURKE: You married one of the rich est men on the planet, yet you weren't really inter ested in his money?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I don't think I said that. I loved the fact that Barry was rich, and that I had a nice place to live and all sorts of other nice things, and that I didn't have to worry about money any more. But did I wake up in the morning thinking about his will, or how much I'd get if he died? No.

MR. BURKE: Yesterday you told us that Barry was convinced he was going to die.

MS. TANNENBAUM: That's right, he was.

MR. BURKE: In fact, he was convinced you were going to kill him, wasn't he?

MS. TANNENBAUM: If he was, he was very good at keeping it secret.

MR. BURKE: Let's talk about life insur ance for a minute, okay?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Okay.

MR. BURKE: Disregarding for the mo ment the twenty-five-million-dollar policy that you signed the application for, did your husband have any other life insurance?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I have no idea.

MR. BURKE: Did Barry ever mention it?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Not that I recall.

MR. BURKE: Did you ever ask?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No.

MR. BURKE: In eight years of marriage, the subject never even came up in conversation?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I don't think you have a very clear understanding of our marriage, Mr. Burke. I was Barry's wife, not his business partner.

MR. BURKE: So you had absolutely no idea if he had any life insurance or not. Is that what you're telling us? Again, we're not counting that twenty-five-million-dollar policy.

MS. TANNENBAUM: I had no idea about that, either.

Score one for Samara.

MR. BURKE: So just to review for a mo ment. So far as you knew, you'd have gotten abso lutely nothing if you'd divorced Barry. Correct?

MR. JAYWALKER: Objection. Asked and an swered.

THE COURT: I'll permit it.

MR. BURKE: Was that your understanding?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes.

MR. BURKE: And for all you knew, you might have gotten absolutely nothing under Barry's will if he were to die. Right?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Right.

MR. BURKE: And finally, you might have gotten absolutely nothing in the way of life insurance, because again, there might not have been any? Right?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Right.

MR. BURKE: You were sitting in a pretty precarious position, wouldn't you say?

MR. JAYWALKER: Objection. Argumentative.

Even as the judge sustained the objection, Jaywalker knew that Burke had not only wiped out Samara's previous point, but had scored heavily on his own. The jury didn't need to hear Samara's answer in order to understand that, at least so far as she knew, her fortunes were in serious jeopardy of turning full circle, from trailer trash to princess, and then back again to trailer trash.

Still, Burke wasn't quite ready to take his foot off

Samara's throat. He got her to admit that the relationship had gradually disintegrated over the years, as she felt in creasingly trapped in a marriage to a man who constantly put his business affairs ahead of her, even as he grew more and more bitter about the various ways in which she hu miliated him.

MR. BURKE: Now, shortly before your husband was murdered, you were aware that his health was bad, weren't you?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I knew that he had a cold that last night I saw him, or the flu. Something like that.

MR. BURKE: Something like that. Any thing else?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Like I said, he was always complaining about something or other, always afraid he was sick or dying.

MR. BURKE: How about coronary disease, heart disease? Did you know anything about that?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I knew he'd had a heart at tack, back before I knew him.

MR. BURKE: How about cancer? Did you

MS. TANNENBAUM: No.

MR. BURKE: You never knew that? know he was suffering from cancer?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No, not until after his death.

MR. BURKE: You're telling us that this ec centric hypochondriac, who was constantly complain ing he was sick and continually expressing his fears that he was dying, never once told you he had cancer?

Jaywalker's objection and Samara's feeble "That's right" were completely beside the point. Burke's implication was crystal clear: Samara was lying. Not only had she believed she was financially vulnerable in a marriage that was rapidly disintegrating, but even were the marriage to somehow survive, she'd known full well that her husband might not. Desperate to protect herself in one way or another, she'd gambled on insuring Barry's life for a huge sum, and then murdered him during the brief six-month window afforded by the policy. Or so Tom Burke would argue in his summa tion, with logic that was pretty irresistible.

And just as Jaywalker knew it would, that brought Burke to the insurance policy. He pulled out the applica tion now, folded it so that the last page was on top, and had a court officer place it in front of Samara.

MR. BURKE: Tell us again whose signa ture that is, please.

MS. TANNENBAUM: Mine.

MR. BURKE: In your own handwriting?

MS. TANNENBAUM: It's my own handwriting, yes.

MR. BURKE: No one put a gun to your head and ordered you to sign it, did they?