Chapter 20

The prosecutor had no intention of painting Ricky Currence as anything besides what he was: a convicted rapist.

He had been transported from Mount Olive Correctional Facility in West Virginia, along with two West Virginia State Troopers, and he was being housed in the jail of a neighboring county (because Mayfield was being housed in Emerald Cove's facility during his trial).

Currence shuffled into the courtroom along with his two handlers. The witness didn't wear a suit and tie or a skirt, blouse and blazer as the previous witnesses had. Currence wore a beige jumpsuit emblazoned with the letters WVDOC prominently on the back along with the word 'PRISONER' in bright orange block lettering across his shoulders. There was a series of numbers stenciled on the front.

His hands were attached by handcuffs to a four-inch wide belt around his waist and his feet were shackled together to where he couldn't take a full stride – only shuffling steps. He wore beige canvas slip-on shoes on his feet.

The sounds of the shackles preceded his entry in the courtroom and every eye in the gallery turned to the back door as it opened. Currence wore a grim expression as he was escorted down the aisle but he stopped when he found himself next to Holly Garvin and Susan Brockleman.

A tear trickled down his cheek when he looked down at the Mary Beth's mother.

"Ma'am, I am terribly sorry for the role I played in your daughter's death," he said in a whisper. Susan Brockleman did not look up at the young man beside her but Holly glared at him.

A sharp nudge by his jailers and Judge Manning's gavel urged Currence to the witness stand. One of the troopers held the Bible to Currence's bound hands for the oath and he took his seat.

"Please state your name, your age, your occupation and your place of residence for the record," Allyson said in an even voice. She had spent three weekends in West Virginia prepping Currence for his testimony. He came across as someone who had finally recognized the circumstances of his life but she had been warned that he very likely was a borderline sociopath with little regard for anyone but himself.

"My name is Richard Allen Currence," the witness said into the microphone. "I am twenty years old. I am currently unemployed and I reside at Mount Olive Correctional Facility in Mount Olive, West Virginia."

"You're in prison?" Allyson asked.

"Yes, Ma'am," Currence said. "I am currently serving an eighteen-to-twenty-five year sentence for first-degree sexual assault, unlawful restraint, terroristic threats and forced sodomy."

"Were you convicted of these charges at trial?" Allyson inquired.

"I pled guilty," Currence announced. "I am guilty."

"Have you been offered any enticements for your testimony here today?" Allyson pushed.

It was critical that the jurors understand that Ricky Currence wasn't getting anything for coming down to rat out his friend.

"No, Ma'am," Currence answered.

"You will not get a reduced sentence for your testimony?" Allyson pushed.

"No, Ma'am," Currence stated.

"You will not get a parole recommendation for your testimony?" Allyson asked.

"I have been informed by my attorney that, due to the nature of my crimes, I will not be considered for parole when I meet my minimum sentence," Currence said as his voice wavered slightly. "I will serve all 25 years. I also have pleaded guilty to gross sexual imposition in two cases in Ohio and will serve 21 years there – after I've completed my current sentence."

"Do you face any other criminal charges at this time?" Allyson asked.

"I have agreed to plead guilty to accessory before the fact and accessory after the fact in this case," Currence answered.

"Have you been offered a reduced sentence on those charges for your testimony today?" Allyson pushed.

Currence shook his head and sighed.

"I will face a stiffer sentence if the defendant in this case is convicted of capital charges," Currence answered. "If he is convicted on a lesser charge, I will be sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years. If he is convicted on a capital charge, I will serve life without the possibility of parole. I gain nothing from coming forward; I only lose from it."

"That begs the obvious question," Allyson began, "why are you here today?"

"I could sit up here and tell everyone I found God in prison but that would be a lie," Currence answered. "I haven't found anything in prison but perspective. I don't want anyone to feel sorry for me. I made the choices I made and I did what I did. I can't change that. But I've come to wonder if I ever really had a choice at all. My life has revolved around taking whatever I could take from whoever I could take it from. I'm here because – for once in my miserable life – I want to do something right. I want to make the right choice and not the wrong one. Mary Beth Brockleman was a good person. I knew her from the time I was six years old. She didn't deserve this. None of them did."

Currence spent most of the first morning session describing his relationship with Jonathan Mayfield, Joey Straight, Trevor Adams and Mark Shrekengost. He testified that, with the exception of Shrekengost, the other boys came from the most affluent families in the county. Their parents were friends and they were thrown together from the outset of their lives.

Mayfield was the clear leader, Currence said, because his family was the wealthiest. The four boys – Mayfield, Currence, Straight and Adams – had gone from racing their bicycles together to playing youth sports together. But their relationship also had a darker side.

"We realized pretty early that we could get away with almost anything," Currence said.

"When did you learn this?" Allyson inquired.

"Well, to be honest, it was always there," Currence said. "None of us were ever punished for anything. But it really hit home the summer after third grade. We were nine years old."

"What happened then?" Allyson asked.

"Your Honor, I'm going to renew my objection to this line of questioning," Wyatt Quinn announced. "You're allowing her to introduce prior bad acts."

"And I'm going to continue to allow it, because it goes to the defendant's state of mind," Manning stated without looking over. "Carry on, Mr. Currence."

"That's when we committed our first major crime," Currence said.

"Major crime?" Allyson asked.

"We'd done all the petty stuff for years," Currence told the jury. "We stole candy from stores and vandalized bus stops. We broke windows at the church and pulled fire alarms at school – relatively harmless crimes. Our parents called it petty mischief."

"I'm not sure I would agree but that's not at issue," Allyson said with a frown. "What happened when you were nine?"

Currence took a deep breath.

"There was a kid," he began in a halting voice. "I guess he was 12 or 13. He was, well, I guess to be politically correct; I'd say he was mentally slow. We called him a 'retard'. His name was Scotty and his family, well, they weren't real well-off. He used to deliver papers to help them out. I guess his family had saved up and bought him a new bicycle. It was almost as nice as the bikes we all rode. We decided that wasn't right – or at least that's how we justified to ourselves. The truth is that Scotty was different."

Currence shook his head and bit his lip as another tear escaped down his cheek.

"Damn it," he said. "He was happy. He was a friendly kid who treated everybody he met as a friend. He was a damned nice kid from a good family who worked his ass off to do whatever he could to help them along."

"Mr. Currence, I realize this is difficult but I must ask you to refrain from profanity in my courtroom," Manning chided from the bench.

"Yes, Your Honor," Currence replied. "I apologize."

"What did you and your friends do to this boy, Scotty?" Allyson asked.

"We jumped him," Currence replied. "We waited for him to come around a turn. There was a hill, you see. Scotty would come down that hill as fast as he could, laughing the whole way."

Currence smiled slightly but it disappeared quickly.

"We waited near the bottom," he continued sadly. "We threw tacks and nails in the road and his tire burst. He wrecked his bike and his papers went everywhere. He was hurt pretty badly. He was bleeding from a big cut on his head. But that wasn't enough for us. Oh, no. We punched him and kicked him until some guy came up the road screaming at us. We picked up Scotty's bike and the envelope from his collections and ran off. We took the money and the bike and threw them in the river."

"Do you know how badly Scotty was injured?" Allyson asked.

"Not specifically," Currence said sadly. "I know that he walked with a limp for the rest of his life and he couldn't talk. He had bitten most of his tongue off when he wrecked."

"Did anyone know it was you and your friends who attacked Scotty?" Allyson posed.

"Everyone knew," Currence said. "There were ten or fifteen people who saw us do it. We heard the police sirens and the ambulance as we were running away."

"Were you charged for the attack?" Allyson queried.

"Of course not," Currence scoffed. "The sheriff pulled us aside with our folks and told us he knew boys would be boys but that we had to be more careful in the future. He told us that he managed to smooth this one over but he wasn't always going to be able to do that. Our parents paid Scotty's family some money and the guy the sheriff said called the cops was fired from his job. After that, no one said anything more about it."

"What lesson did you, personally, take from this encounter?" Allyson asked.

"That our parents could buy or coerce our way out of anything," Currence answered.

After the mid-morning break, Allyson delved into the relationship the quartet formed with Mark Shrekengost. The hours of questioning had produced a far different reality in that area than everyone in Emerald Cove assumed existed. Currence told the jury that the foursome's popularity stemmed not only from their parents' wealth but also from their athletic exploits. Jonathan Mayfield was not only the richest kid in the area; he was also the best at football, basketball and baseball – the athletic pursuits that life in Gallia County revolved around.

"That changed when we were in fourth grade," Currence said. "That's when Mark Shrekengost moved back to town. We were playing pee-wee football and Jonathan had always been the quarterback. But Mark was better. He was a faster runner and he could throw the ball, too. He was bigger and stronger than the rest of us, even at that age. The football coach wanted Jonathan to move to end and Jonathan's dad threw a fit. The next day, we had a new coach and Mark was at end.

"The same thing happened in basketball. We were all on the travel team for our area. Jonathan played the wing and he was our leading scorer – mostly because he shot the ball almost all the time. Well, like I said, Mark was already taller than everyone. Jonathan still shot as much as ever but Mark was the leading scorer – because he was able to rebound the misses and score that way. When Little League Baseball rolled around, the coach wanted Jonathan to move from shortstop to center field – because Mark was better at baseball, too. Mark was going to be our top pitcher and our clean-up hitter. But, once again, Jonathan's father stepped in got that changed. It created a big rivalry between the two of them.

"To make things worse, Mark was a good person. People gravitated to him – not because of how much money his mother had or because he was good at sports. They liked him because he treated everyone really well. After the incident with Scotty, people stayed away from us. They were scared of us – which was fine because we mistook fear for respect. They got out of our way in the hallways. Even the teachers knew that they couldn't control us."

"Yet you eventually became friends," Allyson said. "Is that correct?"

"Not really," Currence said. "We all sort of figured out once we hit middle school that Mark was going to be the most popular kid around. So we made it a point to invite him to things. If Mark came, that meant a lot of the popular girls would come too."

"Girls like Mary Beth Brockleman?" Allyson pushed.

"Exactly like Mary Beth," Currence answered sadly. "She was the smartest girl in the class and she was the prettiest, too. To Jonathan, that meant she should be his girlfriend."

"Objection, Your Honor," Quinn said. "That's pure speculation."

"Sustained," Manning agreed.

"Did you personally see Jonathan Mayfield ask Mary Beth Brockleman for a date?" Allyson wondered.

"Many times," Currence told the jury. "He started asking her out when we were in sixth grade. She turned him down every time."

"But she did accept a date with someone else, isn't that correct?" Allyson posed.

"Yes," Currence replied. "Mark Shrekengost asked her to go with him to the dance during the fall of our sixth grade year. She agreed immediately."

"How did the defendant, Mr. Mayfield, react?" Allyson wondered.

"Badly," Currence told her. "It was awkward. Mark had already hit puberty and the rest of us ... uh ... hadn't. He was several inches taller than us. He had hair under his arms. He had muscles. We were still little kids. Jonathan wanted us to jump him after school the day before the dance. He got us baseball bats and ski masks and everything."

"Did you attack Mr. Shrekengost?" Allyson asked.

"God no," Currence said, shaking his head. "Someone must have overheard us because Mark confronted us. That's the thing that irritated Jonathan – the defendant – most. Mark wasn't scared of us and he never backed down from us. He cornered us in school the day it was planned. He told us if we were going to jump him to get on with it. But he promised us that he would make one of us pay before we got to him. He pointed right at Jonathan – uh, the defendant – and told him that he would make sure he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair even if the three of us killed him afterward. We decided it would be best if we left him alone. None us thought he wasn't serious."

"Were you still friends after that?" Allyson inquired.

"Not really," Currence admitted. "But we were involved in the same activities so people thought we were. I mean, we played the same sports; we were in the same classes; we went to the same parties. It was an easy mistake to make. But Mark really didn't put up with our ... uh, I apologize in advance but I can't think of a better word. He didn't put up with our bullshit."

"Did he often confront you about your actions?" Allyson asked.

"I wouldn't say he confronted us often but he did confront us," Currence said.

"Is there one time that is more memorable than the others?" Allyson pushed.

"Yeah," Currence admitted in a low voice. "After Mary Beth shot down Jonathan and Mark made us back down from jumping him, others started to stand up to us. So we had to do something to prove we were still the toughest guys in the world."

"What did you do?" Allyson queried.

"There was a girl who turned Jonathan down for a date at lunch," Currence said. "It was in front of everyone, too. That night, we broke into her house. We knew her dad worked overnight because my family owned the factory where he worked. We, uh, we tied up the mother and made the girl strip naked. We wore all black clothing and ski masks, foolishly thinking no one would recognize us. No, that's a lie. The truth is that we didn't care if anyone recognized us or not."

"Did you sexually assault the girl?" Allyson asked.

"That was the plan," Currence admitted. "We had been on the Internet and we had a bag with everything we'd need to keep from leaving evidence behind."

"But did you sexually assault her?" Allyson pushed.

"No," Currence said. "A neighbor must have seen us sneaking through the woods or something. He came over and banged on the door. It scared us and we ran."

"Did the victim contact the police?" Allyson asked.

"Oh, sure," Currence said. "She knew it was us. Everyone knew it was us. The sheriff told us that make sure that we told everyone we were together at Jonathan's house. Jonathan's father told everyone we were there and no one would argue with him."