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The body of a young female was found face down in the freezing water of Lake Stanley Draper the evening of December 20th. Her pants were unfastened, and her panties were around her thighs. Fecal matter was found smeared on her body and on a pair of pink leotards with the initials “JB” embroidered on them. Her hands had been bound behind her back with black shoestrings.She was quickly identified as a young woman named Jewel “Juli” Busken, who had gone missing in the predawn hours of that same day from her apartment in east Norman. Juli was a bright shining star just beginning its rise into the heavens. She had been a prominent member of the ballet program at the University of Oklahoma, and had just completed her bachelor’s program. She had already begun packing to return to her parents’ home in Arkansas for Christmas, and to begin graduate school. They were to come help her move home that evening, but instead came in time to discover that she had been senselessly violated and murdered. The entire community was in shock.The Norman Police Department made an extensive investigation, and her family had made impassioned pleas to the public at large for any information regarding the person responsible for so abruptly ending Juli’s short life, a life brimming with potential. I had only known Juli peripherally, having met her in passing at worship services we both attended at St. Anselm of Canterbury. Her loss was sad and senseless, but I mainly focused on to the information released about her murder, like I did for almost every heinous criminal activity, on the chance I’d wind up working for the frighteningly damaged person who’d committed this filthy, horrifying deed.At that time, I made my living working as a legal investigator for criminal defense attorneys. I prayed I would not be asked to work this case. The last ten years I’d spent working criminal defense exclusively, with two other investigators who had established long working relationships with several established defense attorneys in the state of Oklahoma. My family business was investigation: my grandfather had founded what became one of the largest, most respected investigative firms in the southwest, and my grandmother and mother also worked for him. As a child when I visited my grandparents in the summer, I accompanied my grandfather to interviews with clients and attorneys alike, and it had always been part of my life.Time passed after the initial shock of the crime, though, and the police seemed stymied. They investigated over three hundred suspects, but found no solid leads to anyone who either would have a reason to destroy that young woman, or who had even crossed her path. The family made emotional appeals to the person responsible, or anyone who knew anything at all about the murder, to come forward.The story began to fade from the forefront of the community’s minds. There remained a underlying sense of discomfort that something so heinous could happen in our town.*****Aside from being a private investigator, I’m also active in my church. That may seem to some to be an unusual combination, but for the sake of my soul and all the souls whose lives have fallen into my hands, I’ve offered many prayers and served in my church many hours. Being behind the altar during the service of the table, then having the opportunity to serve the chalice to communicants, is the most powerful part of the service for me. There’s something very real and primordially mystical about the sharing of bread and wine with other supplicants, none of whom can be truly worthy, that binds those who sup to each other and to an ideal espoused by Christ. The repetition of this remembrance, this anamnesis, strengthens and renews, indeed spiritually feeds, all those who choose to partake. I was frequently asked by the rector to serve at special services like weddings, baptisms, and funerals. I received a phone call one afternoon in mid-May from the priest, Fr. Don Owens, about serving at an upcoming wedding, the spring following Juli’s murder in December. “Lezlie, would you mind serving chalice at a wedding this Saturday evening?” Fr. Don didn’t give me any particulars. It wasn’t unusual for him to ask me to serve during the summer when most of the students were not at the university.“Sure, I’d love to.” I took down the details about the time and location. He said he expected it to be well-attended, so I knew it would be a long service.Until I arrived at the church and saw the bulletin, I didn’t realize the significance of the service, and the sensitivity with which it needed to be handled. The bride was the former best friend of the same young woman who had been brutally raped and murdered in our town, right before Christmas. Juli Busken was to have been the bridesmaid for her friend, who also attended St. Anselm regularly.The dress was beautiful, with many yards of finely-wrought lace and a long train. The bride was ethereally radiant, but occasional crinkles of pain around her eyes made it clear she was struggling with the absence of her best friend. Juli’s memory was openly honored, and the atmosphere was emotionally charged, the anticipation of new connections in life juxtaposed over the still fresh loss of another’s life.When it came time for communion I moved behind the altar and picked up the burnished silver chalice as Fr. Don moved away with the paten. It is traditional that, following the exchange of vows, the bridal party is served first. The bride was radiant, her new husband’s face shone with pride and pleasure. “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” The solemnity and power of the oft-repeated refrain was murmured along the line. “Amen,” came the traditional response.Then I came to the Buskens. Juli’s father, Bud Busken, looked as though his heart might shatter, the breadth and depth of emotion filling it simply uncontainable. His hands shook as he reached out to the cup. As he tentatively pulled the cup to his lips, he blinked, and a tear rolled down his cheek and splashed into the wine.Suddenly the only sound I could hear was my own breath. I felt as though someone had just ripped open my chest in order to show me my own broken heart, to see the suffering of her family and friends. The comingling of the blood of Christ’s offering with the physical manifestation of this man’s loss was served to the entire body present.I numbly served the remainder of the line, relying upon years of practice to keep moving from one communicant to the next, holding on until I could retreat behind the altar to refill the chalice. I turned my back to the filled church and took a slow, deep breath, then gently released it before I resumed the service. The wedding concluded, the bride and groom and their family and friends gathered for photos, then there was to be a lovely reception to honor the newly married couple. I quietly helped clean the altar, packed my vestments away, and drove home to my quiet little house on a dead-end street, pensive and drained.*****In October of 2001 I got a call from Steve Stice, a local attorney who frequently did work for the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, about a case he had just received. He asked me if I could stop by his office to go over the case the next afternoon, and I agreed.“It’s a charge of rape, but the accuser is the mother of my client’s child, and they’ve had an ongoing relationship for a couple of years. Can you go talk to him and get his side?” Steve was built more like a football player than an orator, with sandy blond hair and what people call “All-American good looks.” Like most attorneys who worked for OIDS, had more on his plate than he could say grace over.“No problem. I’ll go up tomorrow afternoon,” I assured him. Next afternoon I went through the security precautions and the innate hassle involved in visiting someone locked up in the Oklahoma County Jail. I understood the security issues, but I had all my documents in order: I had the appointment from OIDS with both the attorney and the defendant’s names provided, as well as my own. “It’s going to be hard to get a private room. I’ll have to put you in general visitation,” the deputy sneered. He was about my height, and on good days I’m five feet, four inches tall. His gear was all in tip top shape, virtually unused, and his short brown hair was meticulously moussed into place. A slender moustache reclined across his thin upper lip. He looked up to see my reaction, hoping for who knows what. Representatives of the system frequently have difficulty distinguishing those they consider the “bad guys” from those who play a role in the defense of those same bad guys.I firmly pushed the appointment letter back towards him. “This guarantees me a private conversation with the client. We have a right to privacy. I am a representative of his defense team,” I said politely but succinctly, staring directly into his eyes.He looked down. “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor. You can wait over there,” he replied cursorily, indicating a waiting area filled with institutional furniture and buzzing fluorescent light.The humans occupying that purgatorial space were a disparate lot, but all possessed a common defensiveness, an attitude developed from being on the losing side too often.I chose a seat as far away from anyone as possible, with a good view of both the reception desk and the other occupants of the room, as well as all the doors. I slid the papers back into my old soft-sided brown leather briefcase, and set it into the floor next to my left foot, and leaned back to observe my environment. A tired young woman across the room tried to console a crying infant and a filthy toddler, snot running down his face, onto the fist he had shoved into his small mouth. An older man sat staring at his hands, and a woman prematurely aged by poverty and hard work was digging in her beige, cracked plastic purse for something. She finally found a crumpled tissue and a tube of lipstick. I watched as she carefully applied the flat red lipstick then blotted the excess onto the tissue, which she then shoved back into her purse. I took a deep breath and settled in for what I knew could well be a long wait. Almost two hours later I heard my name called, and I returned to the reception desk. “We found a break room you can use, but there ain’t no observation there. It’s up to you. He is a rapist,” he leered.“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’m not the one who locked him up in here.”They led me to a room filled with long several long plastic tables with bench seats attached. The orderly in the room was told he would have to come back when we were done. They walked out, and I waited to meet our client, Anthony Sanchez. When the detention deputy brought the defendant in, the orderly was with him. “You gonna help my boy here? ‘Cause he’s a good guy, don’t deserve this bullshit,” the orderly informed me, an expectant, slightly aggressive grin on his face.“It’s my job, I’ll do my best, I always do,” I assured him with a smile.He nodded and turned to walk out. “Just press this intercom button here when you’re done, and we’ll come get him,” the deputy pointed at the white plastic button over a small round speaker mounted in the wall above the light switch.A good-looking Hispanic kid with some sharp Mexican-style lettered tats had come in with them, and he sat down across from me. He held out his hand, “Anthony Sanchez, ma’am,” he said.We shook hands as I introduced myself and explained my relationship to his case. His orange prison uniform in stark contrast to the industrial gray walls, he seemed sheepish, nodding politely, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted. “I need to know everything about this case, so that we can figure out how best to defend you. So start at the beginning, please.” His accuser, Karli, was the mother of his child, he said, and they had exchanged passionate letters while he had been in prison for stealing a car. She’d also sent him erotic photos of herself. The photos had been confiscated by incarceration officials, but we would be able to subpoena them. “Man, you know, I was in this halfway house, and I was workin’ good, doin’ what they said, but I wanted to party, you know? I called up my old lady, Karli, man, we got a beautiful little boy together, and we made a plan for her to pick me up after lights out.” He grinned broadly as though still pleased with his plan. “I crawled out of a window on the back of the building, and she was waiting in the parking lot. We went down to her house, and, you know, we partied.” The first part went as planned, and their apparent success was heady, intoxicating. They drove to Norman, their hometown, from Oklahoma City where his halfway house was situated. They went to a couple of bars first, drinking beer with whiskey shots, dancing, posturing for the copulation that was slated to begin shortly.They managed to make it back to her house without mishap. They made love all over her house. Literally. Vaginal and seminal fluids were found on door frames, bathtub, bedposts, and the coffee table. The police evidence reports were overflowing with ripe details. The Norman Police are nothing if not thorough.“So, when you partied, what do you mean exactly?” I asked.“Well, you know, we smoked a little weed, and drank a little beer, and she was all over me. We had sex in the living room, then in the bedroom, then we smoked some more weed,” he said, as though it should have been clear what he meant.Karli had planned ahead and gotten her mom to watch their son, apparently expecting to spend the entire night with her baby daddy. But at some point, a woman named Brittney, one of her friends, had called to see if they were going to come over, and spoke with him, not her. He wanted to go over to Brittney’s house, but he wanted to go alone. He told Karli that he was going to go get some more beer, in her car. Instead, he went to Brittney’s house. And that’s when Anthony’s trouble truly started.When he didn’t return in about an hour, Karli called a friend and asked to borrow his car so she could find Anthony. She and the friend went to Anthony’s known haunts, and found her car in the parking lot at a condo complex on Alameda in east Norman, in an area once known as “Baker One” by the Norman Police Department, an area infamous for its incidents of violent crime. She knew where he was, and went to the door and pounded on it, hollering his name. Karli claimed in her police report that Anthony and Brittney were having sex, or had just had sex, when she got there. She wasn’t exactly clear, or consistent, in her statement to the police. The evidence that night of the attraction between Anthony and Brittney, however, could not be denied. Karli and Anthony had a verbal altercation. She took her car and left, but as she was walking out, she turned to Anthony and said, “You’ll never see your son again!” She drove home and stewed. About ten days after the event, she called the Norman Police Department and reported a rape. Anthony looked at me expectantly. I had the feeling he felt justified to have followed his desires, and had enjoyed telling the story to a willing audience. But then his eyes changed, and he began telling me how he was trying to get cleaned up and on the right track.“Man, I can’t handle drugs and alcohol. I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, there’s a group here in the jail, and they’re helping me get over those desires.”I nodded politely, waiting for him to say more.“I want to straighten out my life. I know I’ll have more time to serve for the escape.”When Karli took her car and left, he was stuck trying to find a ride back to the halfway house. When none of his friends could come through, he took off on foot. He made it to a convenience store where another friend worked, and sat out front drinking beer with some friends, one of whom ultimately offered him a ride to the halfway house, where he planned on sneaking back in. But when he got back, his absence had been noted. “If I could just have gotten back when I planned, nobody would have known.”As with many repeat offenders, his inability to recognize his responsibility for his downfall was obvious. But he was insistent that he wanted to be a better person, and part of me believed him. He was charming, with a sweet, lopsided smile. I could see why the ladies fell for him. He gave me contact information for his lady friend Brittany, and I promised I’d get the letters to Mr. Stice. I slid them into my briefcase, and we stood and shook hands.“Thank you for helping me. I can tell you’ll be able to make them see I didn’t rape her. I just want to get past this and finish my time and get back to a normal life, I want to see my son and be a good dad.”*****When I interviewed Brittney, she was very sympathetic towards Anthony. “Karli is a real bitch, you know, like, seriously, a real bitch.” She smacked her gum as she looked at me across the flower patterned, faux velvet sofa.I looked at her with what I hoped was a look of nonjudgmental interest. She had her own fatherless child, and cooed about the joys of motherhood in the condo she could not have afforded had she not been a single mother of an infant. Brittney said her mama had gotten her on DHS assistance as soon as they learned the happy news of the impending arrival of a new family member. A young woman with no support and a small child is the easiest category of human being to qualify for support. But you have to play by the rules.“I’ve got an application in at TCIM,” a local phone sales operation, she said hopefully. She smoothed her abnormally yellow, straw-like hair back from her forehead, slightly tossing her head. She had big plans. “I’ve heard about that cosmetology program at Moore Norman Tech Center, and I think I’d be good at doing hair and nails.” She examined the fake nails on the ends of her skinny white fingers with an air of self-satisfaction.If she was able to get into that program, if the state would continue to pay her rent and buy her food, as well as provide daycare for her beautiful, fat, pale son, then she just knew everything would be alright. That would make life almost complete.I was as encouraging as I could bring myself to be. “Maybe when he gets out, we might be able to pick up where we left off. He still writes me, and I send him pictures.”I smiled in an attempt to seem sympathetic without actually saying anything. What she wanted to do with her life I could not control. I had seen it so many times, repeated endlessly, different names, slightly different details, but the same damaged, clueless young women who felt they were not fulfilled if they hadn’t borne a child by the time they were sixteen. Brittney and the client hadn’t actually shared intercourse that night, to her genuine dismay, because Karli learned that her car was at Brittney’s house, not at the grocery store buying beer, and Karli’s arrival had the effect of precluding intimacy between the two young lovers.*****It couldn’t be denied that there were multiple samples of Anthony’s fingerprints in Karli’s house, but he had been to her house on numerous verifiable occasions, so there would have been. And they shared a child, a child they allegedly both loved, which meant, strictly speaking, that they had been intimate on at least one prior occasion. He had hung around with the same group of young people she had in high school, and had been at her house when she lived with her mother, had in fact been present at drug deals in her mother’s house. They were virtually family. The statement from the friend about Krystal’s threat, which was verified not only by the accused, but also by the buddy at the convenience store, who knew both Krystal and Brittney, made our case for us. It was not a tremendous chore to make the alleged victim look like nothing more than an ignorant, spiteful woman, which I did methodically and thoroughly.Once we got the pictures, things became simpler. The photos were nauseating. Initially Karli posed as a seductress, but only tantalizingly, not revealingly. Eventually she bared it all. I knew more about what that woman’s business looked like than I ever wanted to. Between the letters and the photos, combined with Karli’s documented statement that she would insure Anthony would never see his son again, I guess the verdict shouldn’t have been a shock. It’s just that when you work criminal defense, the victories are usually small and incomplete. I can recall exactly three clients who were completely exonerated of the charges against them in 25 years of work. I can’t escape the memory of many, many more clients whose innocence or ignorance led them to be in the wrong place with the worst people. These people never get off. They always suffer some punishment that is not as severe as life imprisonment, but enough to radically change their lives. Your future changes irrevocably when you become a convicted felon. I didn’t speak to Anthony again after the verdict was handed down. Mr. Stice called to thank me for my work and to tell me I could bill OIDS for my services, we were done with this case. I remember telling the attorney that I thought the client was telling the truth, and I’m still not sure that he wasn’t. *****I was watching the ten o’clock news a couple of years later while working on dinner, and I heard a name that sounded familiar. I focused on the television, then I heard another name I also knew. I watched the recorded press release from the Norman Police Department that Juli Busken’s killer had been identified through DNA evidence. When they showed the booking photo of the owner of the sample of genetic material, I felt my heart lurch in my chest. It was the charming Hispanic youth I’d so handily gotten off a rape charge a few years earlier.I sat down before I fell. My heart was beating in my ears. Math isn’t my thing, but I was desperately trying to figure out how many years she had been dead, and when I had worked his case. I went to my office and had to dig out a box of closed files to find his. Our case was after the date of the ballerina’s murder. He had only gotten out of prison for a short while before his impulses landed him back inside. Something about armed robbery…it didn’t sound like something the young man I’d represented would do. He seemed a bit dull but not malicious, but investigators learn to never really trust their clients, or anyone else, either. The beautiful, bright young ballerina, Juli Busken, had been dead for about five years when Karli accused Anthony of rape. Relief washed over me when I realized I hadn’t been instrumental in gaining him the freedom that allowed him to commit the crime against the innocent young woman. But I had sat across from him and talked to him about choices. He had found Christ in jail, he said. He was going to change. He was a trustee because of his model behavior. The jailor who brought Anthony into the interview room wanted to make sure I was working in his best interest. I had laughed with him about the irony of life, and spoken encouragingly about thinking about vocational training when he got out. He liked to work on cars, so he wanted to study auto mechanics. He had big plans. Finish his time, get out and get a job, go to school to become certified in auto repair. Maybe hook up with Brittney, start a family. Definitely go to court to get visitation rights so he could see his son. Though I found some solace in the knowledge that I didn’t work to free him before his vicious assault, the feeling of shame and dirtiness that came upon me that evening will never fully disappear. Intellectually, I know that I just did my job, that there are people who are sociopaths, and that bad things happen to good people. I hold these things in my mind, but I know my heart will never recover. I can never forget the memory Bud Busken’s tear sparkle as it broke the surface of the blood red wine in the communion chalice.The things that people willfully do to each other are too many times abominable. One can only read so many details, see so many pictures, about the swelling of the child’s brain from repeated blows to the head, or the broken bones that are layered by date of occurrence, indicating that the abuse was withstood by the child for a long time, or about the woman who plots with her boyfriend how to kill her husband because she wants a big screen TV, which she will be able to afford with his insurance money.Or perhaps about the trailer house out in the middle of nowhere with evidence of the children spending more time under the trailer than in it, with only a small dingy nub of a blanket and a grubby stuffed dog in the shady sand under the trailer for protection, while the dwelling is filled with filth: food trash, human and animal feces, cigarette butts, magazines and mail, junk. There was a half-gallon container of solidified milk on the counter, and a cereal box on its side. Most people really don’t comprehend the stories about the horrors that live in some people’s souls, because they consume so much story that much of life takes on a fictional quality. It becomes a reality TV show. And that’s good, because that means that most people are neither victims nor perpetrators.Many say fiction is an exaggeration of real life, but I am witness to the fact that real life is far more bizarre and scarring than any fiction I’ve ever encountered. *****The attorney who had represented Anthony Sanchez in our case called the day after the press release and asked if I was aware that Anthony had been identified as Juli Busken’s killer. I admitted I was aware, with some caution. I didn’t want to be involved in this case, I couldn’t do it.Criminal defense workers walk a thin line that separates their ability to hold an ideal of justice foremost in mind, when working with the accused, from their inability to avoid recognizing the questionable traits many of their clients hold in common. We know the importance of the right to defend oneself upon accusation. The affirmation of it is branded on our souls the first time we have confirmation that an innocent person has been ruined or executed. But the repetition of the same stories makes it impossible to ignore that some people haven’t had the opportunity to obtain the skills necessary to successfully function in society. And this man had left his genetic markers all over the lifeless body of the ballerina, a woman I had known.Turns out the attorney hadn’t been given the case, and was just warning me that I might be contacted by the new counsel regarding the old case. He seemed to be seeking the same assurance I longed for, that we hadn’t done harm.Foreboding filled me each evening before the news. I couldn’t avoid watching it, but flinched from the sound of Anthony’s name and the details.The investigation and trial took a surprisingly short time. DNA evidence is compelling, and the original investigators’ work had been thorough. The defense attorney couldn’t seem to find anything to say that made sense. He knew he needed to say something, but hadn’t apparently developed the ability to elaborate extemporaneously, and seemed sad and nervous as I watched him on television.I felt for him, but held a core of relief and hope for redemption deep within myself. The verdict was no surprise. Anthony was the only person who seemed genuinely perplexed. That’s when I realized he would probably be diagnosed as suffering Antisocial Personality Disorder. He was a sociopath. One definition of his disorder includes the following beautifully specific and inclusive description: “The diagnosis includes what may be referred to as amoral, antisocial, asocial, psychopathic, and sociopathic personality (disorder).”Huh. I finally understood. I’d had plenty of truly crazy clients, but in that easily identifiable way, with voices and bizarre convictions. This was my first pure sociopath, a being without any sense of or interest in how their actions affect other people.Sweat broke out on my brow and I felt queasy. I had sat across the table from him, worked diligently with him to prove his innocence. And his damage hadn’t been evident or apparent by his demeanor or actions in my presence, the few times I met with him in the Oklahoma County Jail. Currently he’s sitting on death row, moving through the requisite appeals. In McAlester, this is the nicest part of the state prison, H Unit. This is Oklahoma, though, so he may actually receive his penalty. The ballerina’s parents finally have enough details to no longer wonder who took their daughter’s life, but the why cannot be settled. I’m unable to look at any person, ever again, and believe I can know who they are, deep inside. I cannot trust, I mustn’t trust, the monsters are real and they look just like us. ................
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