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that brings him right up out of bed. He went to his dentist on May
18 but X rays revealed no overt problem. His dentist, aware of the
trial stress, diagnosed, "It's all in your head. Ha. Ha."
During the day, Hugi is so wrapped up in the trial he can
ignore the pain. But it comes back every night. He is aware that [tension can
trigger psychosomatic pain, but this is beyond any'
thing he ever imagined. (After the trial, when the pain continued,
he insisted upon another X ray, and his dentist found the problem.
Hugi had clenched his teeth so hard that he had split a tooth
vertically, such a clean crack into the nerve that it looked normal
in the first X ray. An oral surgeon attempted a root canal filling,
but the tooth fell apart. When it was pulled, the pain "in his
head" vanished.)
* * *
382 ANN RULE
On May 21, the courtroom has been transformed. The mock-up of
Diane's car is in place, filling much of the space between Judge
Foote's bench and the defense/prosecution tables. The roof is off
and set to one side. This car is not red, it is pale blue--so that the
outlines of blood pools will show. The names of those who bled
there are written in. Just like the real Nissan Pulsar's, the front
seats are buckets with head rests, the back a bench seat.
The dolls are in the courtroom this morning. They aren't as
realistic as the car is--only large white rag dolls that will bend
into different positions. Their eyes are black felt, mouths rosebud
pouts. The Christie-doll has hair of reddish brown yarn, and the
Cheryl-doll's hair is made of lighter brown yarn. The Danny-doll's
hair is bright yellow. They are exactly the size the Downs children
were on May 19, 1983.
"Cheryl" and "Christie" wear blue jeans, and "Danny"
wears tiny shorts and small running shoes. A single lock of yarn
has worked loose of its stitching and hangs over "Cheryl's" eyes.
Unconsciously, Fred Hugi bends over and brushes the lock of
"hair" away from her eyes. Hugi invariably cradles the "children"
in his arms as he talks about them. Jim Jagger, on the other
hand, tends to toss them on the floor when he finishes with
them--as if to underscore the fact that they are only rag dolls.
This is a mistake. It jars the heart each time one of the dolls
crumples to the floor.
Jim Pex will attempt now to give the jury a crash course in
forensic science. Pex and Chuck Vaughn have inserted a wooden
dowel into a cutaway of a .22 Ruger semi-automatic pistol, and
then held the gun close to the dolls' "wounds" to determine
angle. A rigid white probe ran from the gun's barrel through the
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wounds to show the bullets' paths. Pex demonstrates on the rag
dolls.
It is a standard procedure in autopsy to help forensic pathologists
ascertain the height of the shooter, his position, and the
position of the victim. It is horrifying for the layman to watch.
This morning, the jurors and the gallery can see the children as
they were when they were shot.
Jim Pex uses an overhead projector to demonstrate how close
the shooter was to the victims. With a .22 caliber gun, the maximum
distance barrel-debris (particles) will travel is two to three
feet. All of the children had heavy stippling around their wounds.
Pex used a number of tests to verify his findings: the Sodium
Rhodizonate test (which turns purple in the presence of lead); the
* SMALL SACRIFICES 383
Greiss test (for Sodium nitrates); a soft tissue X ray; the appearance
of the skin itself; the swollen fibers of clothing where the
bullet penetrated.
The gun barrel had been between six and nine inches from
the wound in Diane's forearm.
The gun had been nine inches or less from Danny's spine.
The gun had been nine to twelve inches away from the two
wounds in Christie's chest (wounds so close together that they
could be covered with a half-dollar piece), but only one or two
inches away from the hand she held up in a vain attempt to block
the second bullet.
The gun had been six to nine inches away from Cheryl's right
shoulder--the first shot--but it had been right next to the skin--a
near-contact wound--at Cheryl's left shoulder.
Pex places the doll children in the car mock-up. Danny is on
his stomach on the left side of the back seat. "He would have
been paralyzed immediately upon being shot." With the gun-on-astick,
Pex becomes the shooter. He shows how "he" would have
had to lean into the car to shoot Danny.
At Judge Foote's invitation, the jurors stand to get a better
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