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ONE
It is not astonishing that the memoranda written by Riker Deems Owen, the defense attorney, regarding what came to be known as the Wolf Pack Murders, have been preserved by Leah Slayter, a softly adoring member of Mr. Owen’s staff.
Though Riker Deems Owen had long had the habit of writing windy and rambling memoranda for the files, to “clarify my concepts,” his output in this instance is of more than normal interest.
It was his first—and most probably his last—case conducted under the hot glare and distorting lens of national publicity. Perhaps no one could have won the case. And “won,” within this particular framework, can be translated to mean any penalty less than death. Riker Owen, at forty, had a solid record of success. Once it had been determined, on a jurisdictional basis, that the four co-defendants would be tried in Monroe—which calls itself The Friendly City—the stunned parents of Kirby Stassen, the only defendant with family resources, made a logical choice when they retained Riker Deems Owen in their attempt to save the mortal existence of Kirby Stassen, their only son, their only child, their only chick, their only illusion of immortality.
Owen had not only his comforting record of success, but also a persuasive plausibility that lessened, to some small and necessary extent, their horrid fear. They could not know that they had retained not a savior, not a hero, but an assiduously processed imitation, the hollow result of boyhood dreams distorted by the biographies of Fallon, Rogers, Darrow and other greats.
This does not indicate a special gullibility on the part of the Stassens. In fact, in the early days of the long trial, most of the correspondents in the courtroom believed themselves privileged to watch the birth of a new legend. But as Riker Deems Owen tired, he could not sustain his own illusion. The gloss crackled. The strings became visible. What had been considered quickness of mind was shown to be dreary gambits, well rehearsed. Originality dwindled to a contrived eccentricity. By the time it was over he had suffered a total exposure; he had been revealed as a dull-witted and pretentious poseur, irrevocably small-bore, a midget magician who strutted and puffed under the cruel appraisal of his audience, lifting long-dead rabbits out of his provincial hat.
Yet it cannot be said that he lost the case, because it can never be proven that anyone could have won it.
The notoriety of the case—the State versus Nanette Koslov, Kirby Stassen, Robert Hernandez and Sander Golden on a charge of murder in the first degree—gives a special interest to Owen’s memoranda.
The student of law can read the actual transcript of the trial to his professional profit. Those more interested in the irony of the human condition can read the Owen memoranda instead, and see there the reaction of a rather pedestrian mind to the four souls he was committed to defend.
The confidential memoranda were dictated to Miss Leah Slayter, the newest addition to his staff, who not only took down many of the verbatim conversations between Riker Owen and the defendants, but also acted as his secretarial assistant during the trial itself.
Should the discerning reader detect in the Owen memoranda a certain striking of attitudes which seems inconsistent with the legal approach, it can be blamed not only upon Miss Slayter’s physical attractiveness and her tendency toward hero worship, but also upon the confirmed tendency of Owen’s wife, Miriam, to treat him and all his works, after twenty years of marriage, with an attitude best described as patronizing boredom. A man must have someone before whom he can strut. Also, any excessive imagery in the memoranda can perhaps be blamed upon a wistful desire to publish those memoranda as memoirs at some future date, a conceit not unusual in all professions.
Miss Leah Slayter’s attitude toward her employer kept her from sharing the general disillusionment with the talents of the attorney for the defense. For her he burned as bright as morning. When he sought tears from a stony jury, it was Leah’s eyes which misted. When the verdict was returned, her ripe, shocked mouth gaped open, her brown eyes went wide and round and her fingers snapped the yellow pencil in her hand.
Riker Deems Owen’s reaction to defeat can only be guessed. He wrote no final memorandum after the verdict was returned. It is safe to guess that he knew what the verdict would be, that he sensed his own cumulative ineffectuality, and saw it confirmed by the very shortness of the jury’s deliberations. They were out only fifty minutes—a typical time span when the verdict is to be guilty of murder in the first degree, with no recommendation for mercy. Perhaps Mr. Owen did write a memorandum heavy with blame for every factor except himself. If so, he recognized it in time as an unproductive example of unprofessional flatulence composed as balm for his own ego, and destroyed it.
Nor can Miss Slayter’s total emotional reaction to the defeat of her hero be assessed. One can assume, with reasonable safety, that she was able to rationalize the traditional gift of self to ease the agony of the fallen one. Her warm charms, only very slightly overabundant, awarded with worshipful humility, would have properly reinflated the ego of many men less trivial than Riker Owen. One could say that while he was in the process of tumbling off the merry-go-round, he caught the brass ring.
The first memo in the Wolf Pack file was written after his first few conferences with the parents of Kirby Stassen:
I have experienced a partial failure of communication with Kirby’s parents. I understand why this must be, as I have seen it before. Everyone who works with criminals in any capacity is familiar with this phenomenon. It is, I suspect, a classification error. All their lives, they have been conscious of a great gulf between the mass of decent folk and that sick, savage, dangerous minority known as criminals. Thus they cannot comprehend that their son, their decent young heir, has leaped the unbridgeable gulf. They believe such a feat impossible, and thus the accusation of society must be an error. A boyish prank has been misunderstood. People have lied about him. Or he has fallen under the temporary influence of evil companions.
Their error lies in their inability to see how easy it is to step across the gulf. Perhaps, in maturity, when ethical patterns are firmly established, one cannot cross that gulf. But in youth, in the traditional years of rebellion, it is not a gulf. It is an almost imperceptible scratch in the dust. To the youth it is arbitrary and meaningless. To society it is a life and death division.
Their son has aided and abetted and participated in the commission of illegal acts. And so he is a criminal. These acts have been of such a serious nature that he can never again lead a normal life and, in fact, is in very grave danger of having life itself taken from him as a barbaric penalty.
They cannot comprehend this. They have the pathetic faith that somehow this will all be “ironed out,” with suitable apologies, and they will take their son home with them where he can sleep in his boyhood bed, eat well, and forget all this unfortunate nastiness.
The father, Walter Stassen, is a big, meaty man, positive, driving, aggressive, accustomed to take charge of any situation. He is about forty-eight. In twenty-five years he built one produce truck into a tidy, thriving, one-man empire. He has lived hard, worked hard, played hard. I suspect he has neither patience nor imagination. Now, for possibly the first time in his life, he faces a situation he cannot control. He continues to make loud and positive noises, but he is a sorely troubled and uncertain man.
The mother, Ernestine, is a year or two younger, a handsome, stylish woman with an eroded face, a body gaunted by diet, a mind made trivial by the routines of a country-club existence. She is highly nervous, a possible by-product of the menopause. I suspect that she is a borderline alcoholic. At our two morning meetings she was perceptibly fuzzy. If so, this situation will most probably push her over the edge.
I can detect no real warmth between these two people. They have measured their lives by their possessions. Most probably their emotional wells have been polluted by a long history of casual infidelities. From the way they speak of Kirby, I believe that they have considered him to be, up until now, another possession, a symbol of their status. It pleased them to have a tall, strong son, athletic, bright, socially poised. They were amused at his scrapes, and bought him out of them. Such incidents provided cocktail conversation. They were an evidence of high spirits. For Kirby there was never any system of reward or punishment. This is not only one reason, perhaps, for his current grave situation, but also the reason why they find it so impossible to think of him, at twenty-three, as a person rather than a possession, an adult accountable to society for the evil he has done.
As I had suspected, I met with strong opposition when I stated my intention to defend all four simultaneously. They did not want their invaluable Kirby Stassen linked so directly to horrid trash like Hernandez, Koslov and Golden. They did not see why my services, for which they are paying well, should be extended to cover those people who have had such a dreadful influence on their only son. Let the court appoint defense counsel for them. Kirby would travel first class, as usual.
To convince them, I had to resort to an analogy to explain why this state had been able to extradite them, and why they were being tried for the particular crime committed approximately ten miles from where we were sitting.
I explained that there were several major crimes involved and, of course, many minor ones which we need not consider. The problem was jurisdictional, meaning who would get them first.
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