Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

“Yes, there probably are some.”

“And is it possible, notwithstanding your opinion, that they are right and you are wrong?”

Dr. Perez shrugged.

“I guess that’s a possibility.”

Mack sent a sweeping glance along the jury box before turning back to the notebook.

“Oh, yes.… Dr. Perez, you previously testified that it was possible that the coldness of a window during a blizzard might be sufficient to hurt a person’s hand and might account for the kind of behavior described by Dr. Vassar. I now ask you, in your opinion, is that likely?”

“No, the reaction of the child, the quick, reflexive drawing back from the glass pane, indicates that the magnitude of the painful experience was greater than ice could produce. This, plus her word-stream babbling of ‘hothothothot,’ suggests to me conclusively that it was a fire situation.”

“Thank you, Dr. Perez. That is all.”

As the witness started to rise, Velie swiveled about in his chair and his head jerked around.

“Just a second, Dr. Perez, you’re not through yet.”

Perez turned a languid look on Velie as he sat back down.

“Was Dr. Vassar a hypnotist?” he loudly asked from a seated position.

The crude manner in which the question was put seemed momentarily to fluster the witness. A droll and skeptical smile came to his lips.

“Dr. Vassar was a psychiatrist. She was adept in the use of hypnosis as a therapeutic tool, as are most psychiatrists today, including myself.”

“I see,” Velie said. “Then she was a hypnotist. Thank you.”

The objection from Brice Mack came in a swift, businesslike way.

“I move that Mr. Velie’s remark ‘Then she was a hypnotist’ be stricken from the record, Your Honor, since he’s characterizing the answer of the witness. It is no more true that a person who’s adept in hypnosis is a hypnotist than a man who’s adept with a hammer is a carpenter.”

“Objection sustained.”

There was a momentary impasse during which Dr. Perez remained seated, not knowing whether he was to leave the stand or not.

Assuming his most weary expression, Judge Langley asked both attorneys if they were finally finished with the witness.

“For the time being, Your Honor,” Velie said. “I’ll probably want to ask him more questions later, however.”

Judge Langley instructed Dr. Perez to keep himself available for possible recall and excused him. As the psychiatrist hurriedly escaped the courtroom, Judge Langley turned to Brice Mack and told him to call his next witness.

All eyes in the courtroom shifted expectantly to the door. However, Mary Lou Sides did not appear through the door but rose instead from a seat in the middle of the courtroom and walked down the aisle to the witness stand, causing a light flurry of nervous giggles among the spectators who had been taken unawares.

Janice stared at the big, heavyset, seemingly shy girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, as she raised her right hand and was sworn in by the bailiff. Looking at the straight cornsilk hair and the well scrubbed, smiling face flushed with health, Janice was reminded of the Swiss milkmaid on the Baker’s Chocolate boxes. Shifting her gaze to Hoover, she discovered that he, too, was staring at the girl and was smiling and that Mary Lou Sides returned his smile as she sat, which meant that they were probably acquainted.

The jury, reporters, spectators, and members of the court were not kept wondering long about the purpose of Mary Lou Sides’ presence on the witness stand, for Brice Mack, after eliciting from the soft-spoken girl her name, age (she was thirty-one), and home address, which was in an outer suburb of Pittsburgh, launched immediately into the crux of her testimony.

“On the morning of August 4, 1964, Miss Sides, were you involved in a car accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike?”

“Yes.”

“Is it true that the car you were driving collided with a car being driven by Sylvia Flora Hoover?”

“Yes.”

“Were you alone in your car?”

“No, I was with my girlfriend.”

“And was Mrs. Hoover alone in her car?”

“No.” Here the witness’ voice faltered slightly, and her eyes seemed to cloud. “Her daughter was in the car with her.”

“What was the name of Mrs. Hoover’s daughter?”

“Audrey Rose.”

“Will you tell the jury, Miss Sides, to the best of your recollection, just what happened as you observed it on the morning of August 4, 1964, at about eight thirty?”

“Yes.” Miss Sides took a second to compose her thoughts, to place them back and fix her mind on that moment more than ten years before.

“I was driving on the Turnpike, on my way to work, traveling east. I was with a friend. We both worked for Forsythe Insurance Company, whose main office building was about twenty miles outside Pittsburgh, and were due in the office at nine o’clock.” She paused a moment. “It was a hot morning, but the sky was dark. It was going to storm, and I hoped I’d get to work before it started to rain. I always hate driving in the rain.” The courtroom tensed as her voice, calm and expressionless till now, began to change pitch as she started reliving the next episodes.

“About five miles from work the storm broke. It was terrible. Hailstones as big as eggs. I thought they were going to break my windows. I could hardly see through the windshield and was thinking of pulling off to the side, when this car … this car.…” Her voice broke perceptibly. Press and jury strained forward in anticipation. “This car came skidding past me on my left … a big sedan, skidding and twisting in the road, and I tried to stop, but I couldn’t and … I started skidding too, and I could see we were going to crash into each other.…” Her voice broke again. “I tried to control the car, but I couldn’t, the wheel just twisted around in my hands … and then we hit each other … we crashed.…” A sob escaped her throat. “We crashed.…” Overcome by tears, she paused.

“Are you able to go on, Miss Sides?”

“Yes, I am.”

The words came out in a rush now, punctuated with anguished cries and tears.

“We crashed and both cars went into the guardrail, but at the time I couldn’t see what I’d hit or what stopped my car from going over the cliff because of the hailstorm, but it was a guardrail, and that stopped us, but it didn’t stop the other car. It went over the guardrail and down this steep embankment.” She paused here to control herself. “I don’t know how long I remained in the car, but my girlfriend was unconscious, and I felt wet stuff on my face, which turned out to be blood, because I’d hit my head against the windshield, since I didn’t have a safety belt on, and neither did my girlfriend, but she was unconscious.” She paused, her eyes widening. “And then, all of a sudden, the storm ended, and the sun came out very bright. I remember getting out of the car and seeing the road lined with cars that had stopped, and people standing at the edge of the road, looking down the embankment at the other car, which was upside down. It was smoking, and one of the back wheels was still turning, and then I saw … I saw the face of a girl … a little girl … looking out of the window inside the car … and screaming.…”

The witness broke down here and sobbed openly as she tried to go on.

“Men were trying to climb down the steep embankment to rescue her, but it was hard at this point because it was too steep. Some other men drove down the road about a quarter of a mile to a place where it wasn’t so steep, and I could see them coming far in the distance. But they never got there, because just then … there was an explosion … not loud … like a puff … and all at once the car was swallowed up in flames.… It was just horrible. I could still see the little girl screaming and screaming and beating her hands against the window.… I could see her through the flames as the car was melting all around the window … the paint of the car melting and pouring down over the window.…”