Chapter 38: The Ball Roles On

We walked into the courthouse for what we figured was going to be the first of many hearings. It didn’t turn out that way. I walked in holding Lynn’s hand with Erin and Blossom holding hands behind us. John Smith, our lawyer, smiled and pointed us to four seats behind a railing next to his seat. I sat in the seat furthest from him. Lynn was next to him, Erin next to her and Blossom between Erin and me.

At the table in front of us was a man I found out later was an Assistant District Attorney for Ada County. He was the prosecutor in this case.

A door to the other side of the room opened and a Sheriff came in leading Joan Crawford. She was wearing an orange jumpsuit and was shackled at the ankles and wrists. Her head was down, she never looked at us. She was led to the table across the aisle from ours and she sat next to her lawyer.

I wondered about her lawyer. Lynn had effectively cut off her funding so I wondered if her lawyer was a public defender or what. In the front of the room sat a man with a stenotype machine and a man who must have been the bailiff.

We all sat quietly for several minutes before a door opened and the judge entered, making her way to her seat at the bench while the bailiff rose and loudly announced, “All rise. The Fourth Judicial District Court is now in session. The Honorable Judge Loretta Fowler presiding.”

Once the judge had taken her seat the bailiff announced, “You may be seated.”

We all sat down and the judge opened a file she’d brought in with her. She looked up and spoke, “David, what’s the first case?”

The bailiff, whose name was apparently David, stood and said, “The case is District Court Case number 123456. Defendant Joan Crawford is being charged with five counts of kidnapping and multiple counts of assault with intent to kill.”

The judge looked at Joan and her lawyer and then to the prosecutor.

“I have a note here that a plea agreement has been made. Is that correct?”

“Yes, your honor. William Placer, Assistant District Attorney for the people your honor. We have offered a sentence of ten years with admission of guilt.”

I felt Lynn flinch.

“Has this been accepted?”

The man sitting with Crawford stood and said, “Yes, your honor. Earl Gillespy representing Mrs. Joan Crawford.”

“Mrs. Crawford, please stand and make your statement.”

Joan stood up next to her lawyer.

“Your honor, I accept my responsibility for the kidnapping of the five O’Dell children and for organizing the assault on the O’Dell home which resulted in the deaths of twelve members of my church. I accept the charges as presented and the sentence as proposed.”

She’d spoken the words like she was reciting a Bible verse in a church Easter program.

“Very well. I’ll accept the admission and the plea. The Court sentences Joan Crawford to ten years confinement in the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center.”

The judge banged her gavel and said, “Next case.”

And that was that. Joan got up from her seat and just as the Sheriff was leading her away she turned to us and mouthed, “Fuck You!”

Lynn almost exploded out of her seat but I had a hold of her thigh and she couldn’t stand. The Sheriff and Crawford went through the door and Lynn, for the first time since I’d known her, looked at me in anger.

“Ten years! She only gets ten years?”

She spoke loud enough that the judge banged her gavel and asked for order, before she said, “Mrs. O’Dell please take yourself and your opinions outside my courtroom.”

John stood and quietly said, “Lynn come on outside and I’ll explain things.”

We all hustled her out the door and once in the hallway, Lynn let loose.

“John what the hell just happened? She gets ten years and that’s all? With good behavior she’ll be out in five or six years. She’ll be coming after my children then!”

“Lynn, that’s only for this offense,” John Smith explained. “Her admission that she was responsible for the deaths of twelve women will now go forward in other trials. Each of the families has brought suit and it’s my opinion that she will be serving at least five years for each death. I’ve spoken to the ADA and they will be asking that the sentences run consecutively. That means she won’t be getting out for about a hundred years with good behavior.”

“Is that all?” Lynn said quietly, still fuming.

“Yeah, that’s all,” John said. “Unless we can prove that she ordered her son to attack you three. Then it will be longer.”

“What about parole?”

“Parole will be looked at on a case by case basis and only after five of the ten years has been served on the first count then she needs to serve three out of five years on each of the other counts. That’s forty-one years at a minimum that she will serve if she gets paroled at the minimum on each count.”

Lynn calmed down a bit and looked at John, “No ants and honey?”

“No Lynn. But I’m told that PWCC has a lot of spiders.”

Back at home, Erin opened a bottle of wine and we sat in the family room surrounded by children and the books they were reading. Every once in a while one of the children would giggle or gasp or harrumph as they read.

“I need to ask John how we know that she will get that full penalty.”

“I’m sure that John will monitor the situation.”

“I wonder if they will have a sentencing hearing. If they do we could show up and tell the judge the impact that all this has had on our family. We’ve had to fight a war in our home. I still have the occasional nightmare seeing the women’s heads explode.”

“Maybe we need to see a family counselor,” Erin said, patting Lynn on the leg. “We’ve all had some pretty traumatic moments over the past couple of months. It might be good to talk it out with someone who knows how to deal with trauma and grief.”

“I’m more worried about this thirst you seem to have for vengeance, Lover,” I said. “The look you gave me at the courthouse was not you. I’ve never seen such a look of hate and rage. Even back when we were dealing with the blackmail situation. And now not wanting to let the situation play out. How are you going to react if the three guys don’t get the death penalty?”

“They won’t get the death penalty, Paul,” Lynn said sadly. “But the guy who I shot should get a long time in jail. I can’t imagine the damage he would have done to Blossom if he’d dropped her on his dick. I guess I should be happy that I didn’t get charged with attempted murder or something.”

“If not for the drugs in your systems that would have happened.”

“Yeah, when the manager and the cops came in they were ready to shoot. I guess me passing out after I opened the door might have clued them into the being drugged thing,” Erin said with a little chuckle.

Erin turned serious as she thought about the incident and looked over at Margaret Erin.

“Whatcha’ reading dear?”

“The third Harry Potter book.”

“Are they any good?”

“Mother, they’re wonderful. They’re good stories and they’re well written. They’re easy for a little kid to read and understand but grownups like them too.”

“Can I read along with you?”

“Well, you can but...”

“But what? The old grown up will get in the way?”

“No, Mother. But this is the third book and you sort of have to read the first and second books to follow the story.”

“Oh, OK. So how many books are there?”

“I think seven.”

“And they are all like one big story as well as individual stories in each book?”

“Yes.”

“I got it. I’ll just have to borrow your book number one.”

“I think that William Blossom might be reading it.”

“OK. Then I’ll go out and buy two copies of each book. Then I can read and any of the children can read. We’ll have copies for the young ones when they read.”

“That sounds like a good plan, Mother.”

“Thank you, Margaret Erin. I’m pretty smart for an old lady.”

“Mother! You’re not old. You are still having babies.”

“Yes, I am,” Erin said proudly as she stuck out her proud and extremely large chest.

“Paul,” Lynn asked. “When is the trial for the McCall guys supposed to start?”

“John hadn’t heard yet. He’s supposed to find out this week, I think.”

“Did he tell you what the problem was?”

“Yes. The three want to be tried separately and John and the DA want them to go together. So they keep filing requests but John thinks the judge in McCall is getting tired of it.”

That was about the time things got really interesting. We got a call from John that the McCall folks finally got around to looking at the three guys cell phones and guess what, they found a picture of my three wives in McCall. They were walking down the street from the restaurant, as Lynn later testified. The picture was attached to a text to Joan Crawford and was sent by her son, Gabriel Crawford. The text said, “Hey Mom, if all the scenery up here is this good, I gotta come more often.”

The reply was, “Gabe, those are the O’Dell bitches. It would serve them right to get raped looking like that. Women who dress like that deserve what they get.”“Are they really like that?””Between them they have seventeen little bastards.””Maybe we ARE gonna get lucky. Luv you.””Luv you.”

So we finally had an answer to the question of the three men being there as a plan or not. It was clearly a coincidence that the men took advantage of. The police also informed John that it was apparent that Gabriel Crawford and his two friends carried date rape drugs with them in the car and the three had Cialis with them.

At the trial, Lynn testified that she shot Gabriel as he was about to drop an unconscious, naked, and spread open Blossom on his drug enhanced erection. The judge didn’t allow John to make the connection between Joan Crawford and Gabriel because there was no plan made by the two. But John did bring up the connection when he asked the three wives why they’d been in McCall.

When Blossom explained that their home had been attacked and their children kidnapped and those attacked were led by Joan Crawford the Principal at the Sunset School. When she talked about the terror of being locked in their bedroom waiting for the battle to be over the jury could feel her fear.

When Erin described how she made her way around the stairs, in through the kitchen, and found a place to shoot from cover, the jury sat with their mouths open. Those reactions expanded when Lynn and I described that they were still having occasional dreams, seeing the attackers heads explode.

The three men’s lawyer didn’t put them on the stand. It only took the jury an hour to return with a verdict. In the end all three were convicted of sexual assault, with Gabriel also being found guilty of attempted rape. Gabriel was sentenced to 7 years in the Idaho State Correctional Institute in Kuna, Idaho. The other two men got 5 years. All three had another eighteen months tagged on for possession and use of the date rape drugs.

The circus was over. The church closed and went out of business. The Sunset School was taken over by a group of the teachers who were not involved with the church. Each of them were vetted by the people Lynn uses to vet other business interests. Lynn helped them advertise for an administrative staff and fronted the money to get the new Sunset School off the ground. Then she cut ties with them altogether.

While all of this was going on Erin was also running the Club-Club on a daily basis. Sofia Papadopoulos began to spend some time doing some serious composing with Ronnie. We offered to bring her onstage and have her join the band but it turned out that she couldn’t do it. She has huge stage fright. Even when we gave her credit for her song, she tried to hide behind the bar and not be noticed.

Sofia had a few songs finished before she left “Into The Mix” on the table in the Green Room. She gave those to us and she and Ronnie worked out the rough spots before we performed them. The audience loved each of them and Sofia offered co-writers credit on the songs they corroborated on. It only took about a month for word to get out about this local band in Boise that was doing these wonderful songs.

Lynn had been busy with her efforts against the Church and against the people in Tullahoma. She hadn’t arranged for any friends to come to Boise, so when two very out of place guys showed up on a Saturday night I was thinking that the Church had hired some professional help. I pointed them out to Saul Levin the Club-Club head of security.

He’d already spied them and kept an eye on them while the band played. Erin was walking around the place and that caught the attention of the two guys. They split their attention between the band and Erin. During a longer guitar and piano duet I got her attention and informed her of the two guys and their actions.