Frank De Felitta: For Love of Audrey Rose

For the second time, Hoover calmed her, and the exhausted girl fell asleep against his chest, her hands bloody and her face bruised from her hour-long fight with unimaginable terrors.

And for the second time, Hoover had soothed her by calling her Audrey Rose.

What followed then is difficult to make out, yet it was the critical point in the entire sequence of events. According to the doorman, desk clerk, and elevator operator, all of whom had by now taken note of the strange, intense man frequenting the lobby of the building and demanding access to the Templeton apartment, Elliot Hoover did not leave the residence for nearly an hour, and when he did, his steps were “jaunty, like he’d just done something terrific.”

Mrs. Templeton denied that anything improper had transpired between her and Elliot Hoover. Rather, he had spent the time trying to persuade her more forcibly of the truth of his philosophy. Whatever happened, dawn found Janice Templeton and Ivy fleeing New York by special limousine for the isolation and security of a cabin resort in Westport, Connecticut.

• CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Over a month had passed since Elliot Hoover had intruded into their lives. The strain was beginning to tell, not only on Janice Templeton, but on Ivy as well. Though she had no memory of what happened during the onslaughts, she knew that the night brought on dangers that the waking self did not know. Exhausted, her hands still painfully bandaged, Ivy began to muse aloud on the shores of Westport, vaguely aware that things had altered forever in her young life. Her relationship with her mother remained warm, yet, an intolerable tension seemed to follow them wherever they went.

It was also clear that the Templeton marriage was beginning to crack and crumble under the stress.

On November 13, 1974, Janice and Ivy returned to New York

• THE KIDNAP

Almost before Ivy was asleep, the most violent nightmare of all seized her. Bill Templeton, returned from overseas, called the doctor. But the seizure exceeded his wildest expectations. She bit, kicked, and screamed and, sweating freely, he was barely able to subdue her by tying her to the bed. The doorbell rang and, thinking it was the doctor, Bill ran down to admit him.

It was Hoover.

He lived in Des Artistes now, he explained. He had just moved in. Now he wanted to help Ivy. Bill and Elliot Hoover struggled violently at the door, but Hoover was able to force his entry into the apartment. Janice, fearing for Bill’s life, came to his aid in the corridor. Hoover locked them out of their own apartment.

In the violence that followed, the stories from the score of onlookers are remarkably consistent. Bill Templeton, in a fury of rage, tried to break down the door. A house key was produced just as two police officers appeared in the corridor. Shouting, cursing, Bill led the officers back into the apartment and into Ivy’s room.

Both Hoover and the girl were gone.

They had gone down the rear exit and were ensconced, behind locked doors, in Hoover’s new apartment. There under threat of drawn revolvers, Hoover reluctantly and silently opened his door. He was immediately seized and wrestled into handcuffs.

Not far away was Ivy, calm and breathing easily, and only a bit sleepy for all her ordeal.

Subsequent medical examination revealed the girl had not been molested. Elliot Hoover was arraigned on a single count of first degree kidnapping, bail denied.

• THE GREAT CIRCUS

Which brings the case to December 5, 1974.

Jury selection proceeded slowly. Only the Enquirer covered any of the trial opening, and that with a single reporter. The prosecutor, Scott Velie, was a tough, battle-scarred veteran of almost three decades of legal jousting, and it was widely assumed that he would wrap up the case within a few weeks.

Elliot Hoover’s attorney was Brice Mack, a public defender without notable prior experience.

It was not until the opening remarks that Brice Mack revealed the strategy of defense.

Not guilty by proven reincarnation.

Judge Langley immediately suspended proceedings and conferred over two hours in his chamber with both attorneys. Whatever arguments Mack produced, they were effective, for a subdued Judge Langley overruled the prosecution and the trial proper began.

As the days dragged on, the seats in Part Seven of the Criminal Court Building began filling up. First with news reporters, then with spectators, and finally with orange-robed supporters of Hoover’s, who chanted and swayed when the major bulwark of Hoover’s case, the venerable Gupta Pradesh of India, took the stand to explain the mechanics of reincarnation to a bewildered, skeptical and often amused jury.

Whatever dignity the court may have salvaged from the opening remarks was clearly destroyed when a small riot broke out between courtroom guards and the Hindus.

By now the trial was international news. Mystics and psychics paraded into Courtroom Two, testified for Hoover, and the atmosphere of the court took on the flavor of a county fair viewed through delirium tremens.

The delirium escalated into hallucination when Janice Templeton testified for the defense.

• “YES, I BELIEVE HIM!”

The reasons behind Janice Templeton’s surprising and dramatic testimony are now clear, though in the superheated atmosphere of the courtroom it came like an electric spark into a chamber of volatile gases.

Ivy had been removed to a girls’ parochial school in the countryside not far from Darien, Connecticut. There she participated in a winter pageant, traditional to the school, of the burning of a large and decorated snowman to herald the coming spring.

Hypnotized by the flames, she had broken from the chorus of girls and slowly, irresistibly, had entered the roaring mass of logs and straw, flame, and smoke. Ivy suffered minor burns to her face and scalp, singed hair, and some effects from smoke inhalation. The Templetons interrupted their vigil at the trial and raced to the hospital in Darien.

It was there, apparently, that the great transformation in Janice Templeton’s thinking solidified. She recalled Hoover’s words, spoken so fiercely to her once before. That not only was Ivy the reincarnation of Audrey Rose, but that the struggle of a soul in torment would lead Ivy back to danger, back into the fire and smoke from which she had come.

Fearing for Ivy’s life, and believing that Hoover possessed the key to safeguarding the child’s future, Janice testified on Hoover’s behalf. It was the final break between the Templetons.

• THE DEATH OF IVY TEMPLETON

It was at this point that the prosecution inaugurated the test which led so tragically to the death of Ivy Templeton. Incensed at the antics of the defense, and the malleability of Judge Langley, Scott Velie proposed to put to rest once and for all the question of reincarnation.

Since the child was alleged to be recalling states of mind prior to her birth, it was incumbent upon the court to regress Ivy, hypnotically, and try to show whether that was in fact the case, or whether Hoover had been able to put his own convenient interpretation on a simple case of delirium.

Judge Langley, having agreed to much more for the defense, reluctantly ordered the test.

In a small laboratory at the Darien Hospital, the jury, Judge Langley, Hoover, Bill Templeton, and the officers of the court were sequestered behind a mirrorized window stretching the width of the room. Behind the mirror, visible to the court but able to see nothing of them, was Dr. Steven Lipscomb, doctor of psychiatry. Ivy, pale and still weak from the ordeal by fire, entered the room, the lights were lowered, and she was easily and swiftly placed under hypnosis.

Janice Templeton did not attend the court, but watched through television monitors installed in an adjacent hall for the benefit of visiting newsmen and spectators.