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cards, sewing dresses that she would wear to court, and placing phone
calls to her beloved aunts in North Carolina. She begged them all to
come to Atlanta too and Papa would be and be with her during her
trial.
Bopp Susan and Debbie. But she wanted there, of course, and her. The
prosecutor was needed-her whole family around going to be rude-she was
sure of it.
Susan, having had no luck at all convincing her mother's attorney to
pursue an insanity defense, did whatever she could to help Pat. She
delivered the old-fashioned greeting cards to her mother's customers,
found new customers among her fellow employees at Eastern Airlines, and
listened as Pat talked far into the night about her fears for the
future.
The holiday season of 1976 was not a happy time on Tell Road, no matter
how hard anyone tried to make things seem festive, at least for the
sake of Sean and Dawn. Boppo and Papa had always made so much of
Christmas, even dressing up like Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus- But the
specter of the trial ahead hovered over them, and the knowledge that
bankruptcy for the Radcliffes was not far behind haunted them too.
Still, nobody blamed Pat. They saw her, as always, as the victim of
cruel circumstance.
Largely due to Pat, the Radcliffes' lives had been fraught with loss,
change, and upheaval. After staving off creditors for so long, they
finally went bankrupt. The house on Tell Road was due to go on the
block, a public humiliation that they narrowly avoided when a man who
had worked with t their orses came forward the day before the sheriff's
sale and bought the property.
Margureitte's perfect home on Dodson Drive was only a distant memory
now; they were no longer homeowners at all. Margureitte and the
colonel rented a house at 6438 Peacock Boulevard in Morrow, Georgia, a
hamlet south on I-85. There would be no room for horses, no orchards
or rose gardens. Just a plain house.
Pat moved with them, of course.
PART SIX.
Dunham McAllister had originally been retained to represent Tom
Allanson in his last chance for an appeal. But Tom had come to the end
of his road. It was now Pat who needed all the lawyers she could
afford. McAllister, a bearded, rumpled man in his thirties, and his
wife, Margo, practiced law together in Jonesboro, Georgia. Because
Pat's case was inextricably tangled with Tom's and because her life
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story was so filled with extraordinary events, McAllister had to
immerse himself in research to prepare for trial. There were stacks of
court transcripts to read, medical records, dozens of people to
interview.
McAllister requested delays several times. Pat didn't go to trial in
November, or in January. Indeed, it would be spring again before the
proceedings to be known as The State of Georgia v. Patricia R. Allanson
began on May 2, 1977, in the Honorable Elmo Holt's courtroom. That
day, there was an ironic juxtaposition of items in South Fulton Today:
the defendant's old world next to her present arena. Pictures of the
Palmetto High School Horse Show featuring a pretty young rider on a
Morgan horse, abutted a column headed, ALLANSON TRIAL SET FOR TODAY.
Andy Weathers, assistant district attorney for Fulton County, had been
relieved by the long delays requested by the defense.
The case against Pat Allanson was no sure thing. Not at all. He had
had his own research to do. Weathers, like his opposing counsel, was
in his thirties. He had a thick shock of black hair and penetrating
dark eyes. His voice was as deep and rumbling as thunder, and his mind
lightning quick. He knew he had to be ready when he went into court.
Judge Holt's trials were juggernauts; once they got going, nobody dared
ask for delays. The Fulton County judicial system was overladen as it
was. Caseseven murder cases-usually went in on Monday and got spat out
to a jury by Friday, even if it meant that court was in session until
long after sundown. Judge Elmo Holt could be a curmudgeon, especially
if he was trying to keep within his own tight time schedules.
"That trial," Andy Weathers recalled, "was a very unusual situation, a [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]