Murder thy neighbor, p.17
Murder Thy Neighbor, page 17
Jenelle clearly operates on a severely stunted emotional and intellectual level. Could she really have convincingly impersonated a government official for a year and a half and tricked three adults into taking the lives of two others?
Yes, Brooks believes. She could have.
Indeed, rereading the emails through this new lens, Brooks is struck by “Chris’s” obsession with Jenelle’s thoughts and feelings. For an allegedly long-lost friend living hundreds of miles away, Chris seems quite familiar with Jenelle’s deepest fears and insecurities, and heaps praise on her constantly. He also seems to know exactly how to manipulate Barbara and Jamie to get the reactions from them he wants. And notably, Chris even uses many of the same expressions and makes many of the same spelling and grammar errors that Jenelle does in her own emails.
And if Jenelle really has been posing as “Chris” this whole time, Brooks feels strongly that she and Barbara both should face the consequences.
But now the question is, how in the world can he possibly prove it?
Chapter 29
June 6, 2013
Mrs. Potter, Miss Potter, thank y’all both again for doing this. I know it’s a little inconvenient, but it should really help us out.”
Chief Deputy Joe Woodard of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department leads Barbara and Jenelle Potter down a long, fluorescent-lighted hallway.
“We’d write out the Holy Bible for y’all,” Barbara huffs, “if it would help you catch these sick people. What’s inconvenient is everything they’re doin’ to us!”
The Potter women have claimed that in the ramp-up to Buddy’s and Jamie’s murder trials, which are scheduled for the fall, they’ve begun facing new acts of harassment and some acts of minor but vindictive home vandalism. Woodard has invited them down to the station to type up their accounts in their own words, which he explains will greatly aid in his department’s investigation.
The three arrive at the open doorway of Woodard’s empty private office. He folds his hands on his belly, protruding over his gun and utility belt, and smiles.
“Hopefully this is all we’ll need. In here, please, ladies.”
Over the next hour, Barbara and Jenelle take turns sitting behind Chief Deputy Woodard’s computer typing out lengthy, detailed witness statements, while Woodard watches from an armchair against the back wall.
“These are just great,” he says, skimming their finished work on his screen. “A lot of real helpful leads here. We’ll get right on ’em.” Jenelle and Barbara start to leave. “Miss Potter, before you go, can I ask your help with one more little thing? I understand you’ve also been the victim of some online hacking in the past, ain’t that right?”
“You mean my Facebook? Yeah. A ton.”
“Well, to help us know if it happens again, can you take a gander at some of this stuff we pulled from your account and tell me if you’re the one who actually wrote it?”
Jenelle exchanges a slightly wary look with her mother, but she agrees.
Woodard gives her a pen and printout with various passages cut and pasted from her Facebook profile, including the ABOUT ME section and a handful of other posts. Jenelle reads the passages carefully. She makes a check next to nearly all of them.
“I can’t remember these two. But the rest…yeah, I wrote ’em.”
“Fantastic,” Woodard says with a clap of his hands. “We’ll be in touch real soon.”
The chief deputy escorts Jenelle and Barbara out of the building.
Then he hustles back to his office and sits down at his computer.
Assistant District Attorney General Dennis Brooks is in his office, on the phone, when an alert pops up on his screen that he’s received a new email—from Johnson County Sheriff’s Department chief deputy Joe Woodard.
Brooks pumps his fist in victory. “Hank, I gotta call you back.”
Attached to Woodard’s email is the long, rambling witness statement Jenelle Potter has just written. Also attached is a scanned copy of multiple passages from her Facebook profile that she verified she wrote herself.
Brooks can scarcely contain his excitement as he forwards the email to Dr. Robert Leonard, a professor of forensic linguistics at Hofstra University in New York, with whom he’s been in frequent contact over the last several months.
The modern digital equivalent of a handwriting expert, Dr. Leonard specializes in developing advanced computer algorithms that analyze a host of syntactic and lexical factors in order to establish “authorship identification” of unknown textual sources.
Simply put, Brooks is hoping the professor will be able to verify—and then testify—that the emails from “Chris” (as well as the derogatory Topix message board posts from various pseudonyms) were all actually penned by Jenelle.
But in order to do so, Dr. Leonard had some very stringent requirements. For one, he needed a completely original, stand-alone “K doc” (aka a document known to have been written by the suspect) to compare with the “Q docs” (aka the emails and message threads in question). Like the Q docs, the K doc had to be typed, not handwritten. It had to have been drafted by the suspect completely unassisted, not under duress, and in her own voice. And an independent observer had to be watching the entire time to ensure its authenticity.
For a while, Brooks was stumped. How in the world could he convince Jenelle to do something like that? But after he learned that the Potter women were claiming renewed harassment, it hit him. He enlisted the help of Chief Deputy Woodard, and their plan worked like a charm.
A few weeks later, Brooks receives a fateful call from Dr. Leonard.
The professor informs him that, with an extremely high degree of scientific certainty, both the Topix posts and the emails from “Chris” were indeed written by Jenelle.
It confirms Brooks’s theory. But part of him still can’t believe it—and doesn’t know if he can convince a jury—until a week later when he receives additional evidence from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
At the DA’s request, the TBI’s Department of Digital Forensics conducted further technical analysis of the many emails exchanged between Jenelle, Barbara, Jamie, and “Chris,” focusing primarily on determining the Internet Protocol addresses from which they were sent (that is, the unique string of numbers and letters that identifies a computer’s location when it’s connected to the web). It turned out that although Chris was presumably emailing from his office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia—or wherever his international jet-setting secret-agent life took him—every single one of his emails originated from the same IP address in Mountain City: Jenelle Potter’s personal computer.
Linguistically and digitally, Brooks now has his proof.
Chris is Jenelle.
Jenelle is Chris.
She’s also Matt and Kelly and Dan and Mike, for that matter.
The nasty online smear campaign against Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth was all Jenelle’s doing.
So was the sick scheme to manipulate her parents and boyfriend.
Buddy pulled the trigger.
Jamie kept watch.
Barbara encouraged it.
But the true monster in all of this was Jenelle Potter.
Chapter 30
May 2015
It sounded like such a good idea at the time.
A swing for the fences, sure. But a bold and gallant grasp at justice.
Now, driving to the courthouse for the first day of Jenelle and Barbara Potter’s joint murder trial, prosecutor Dennis Brooks is having some second thoughts.
At least there’s some comfort in knowing that, no matter what happens, Jamie will be spending decades in prison and Buddy will die there. Buddy’s open-and-shut case wrapped up about eighteen months ago, with Brooks successfully securing a double life sentence. Jamie took a plea deal and accepted twenty-five years.
But for a dedicated prosecutor like Brooks, partial justice isn’t good enough.
Still, he’s wondering whether he was right to charge both women with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder as well as actual first-degree murder.
The former charge only requires that a defendant be found to have “solicited, directed, aided or attempted to aid” someone in the commission of a homicide, which Brooks is supremely confident he’ll be able to successfully argue. He can point to dozens of emails in which Barbara, Jamie Curd, and “Chris” talk openly and excitedly about killing Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth and egg one another on to do so. That’s about as clear a case of criminal conspiracy as you can get.
It’s the latter charge that Brooks is concerned about.
Jenelle and Barbara didn’t fire the gun that killed Billy and Billie Jean. They didn’t hold the knife that slit Billy’s throat. They didn’t drive with Buddy Potter to Paw Bill’s house or stand guard outside, like Jamie. On the night of the murders, neither woman was anywhere near the crime scene. In fact, it’s possible they were fast asleep.
Will a jury still be willing to convict them of first-degree murder? If not, Brooks worries, will they throw out the entire case to punish the DA’s office for overreach?
He tries to shake any lingering doubts from his mind as he climbs the stone steps of the stately county courthouse. After many months of trial delays, Brooks is finally delivering his opening statement. And he knows he only gets one shot at making a compelling first impression.
“All rise!” bellows the bailiff. “This court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood presiding.”
The bald, bookish, bespectacled old judge trundles to his seat on the bench and instructs the courtroom to be seated. With no new motions or other administrative matters to deal with, he invites the prosecution to give its remarks.
Brooks rises, buttons his suit jacket, and strides toward the jury box. He glances briefly at the defendants sitting behind him, then takes a deep breath.
“There is nothing in your lives or background that has prepared you to understand the Potter family,” he says with quiet forcefulness. “You have never seen anybody like them. The story is very, very simple. It is a story of a manufactured conflict born in the mind of a very bored, lonely, thirty-year-old woman. Everything that happened…happened as the direct result of Jenelle Potter’s deeply twisted actions.”
Brooks shows the jury crime scene photos of Billy and Billie Jean lying dead in pools of their own blood. To accompany them, he reads selections from various Topix posts in which Jenelle, writing under different fake names, professes her deep-rooted hatred of the victims and her desire that they and their “bastard baby…die die die!” Then Brooks reads snippets from various emails in which Jenelle, writing as Chris, spurs her boyfriend and mother to make her homicidal fantasies a reality.
Pointing now to Jenelle and Barbara, Brooks warns that thanks to these two, the jury is in for the wildest, craziest, most unbelievable story they’ve ever heard in their lives. But every word of it is true. And there are piles of evidence to prove it.
Brooks ends his opening statement and takes his seat.
Over the course of his career, he’s learned that trying to read jurors’ faces is about as accurate as trying to read tea leaves. Nonetheless, he takes the uniform look of shock and horror on all twelve faces as a very good sign.
Until the lead defense attorney rises and gives his opening statement.
Cameron Hyder is Dennis Brooks’s polar opposite in almost every way. Where the middle-aged Brooks can be staid and avuncular, Hyder is young, vibrant, handsome, and dynamic. His slim designer suit is custom-made. His hair is perfectly gelled. His gold cuff links, embossed with his initials, sparkle under the courtroom lights.
And his opening statement brims with fire and passion.
Hyder argues that Jenelle and Barbara Potter are the real victims here. That the two women fell prey to the hacking and scheming of a demented Jamie Curd. Jealous that Jenelle loved Billy more than she loved him, Jamie was the one who convinced Barbara and Buddy to help him murder his romantic rival so he could have their daughter all to himself.
Hyder also argues that his clients are now being victimized yet again—this time by an overzealous prosecutor. The state’s computer evidence is faulty. Its linguistic “expert” is a total quack. And its central theory that Jenelle—a scared, sheltered young woman with the mental acuity of a fifth grader—is some kind of criminal mastermind? Well, that’s just utterly absurd.
Brooks hates to admit it—and definitely tries not to show it—but he finds Hyder’s opening statement alarmingly sharp and compelling.
Maybe the trial is going to be even tougher than he imagined.
Chapter 31
A few days later, Dennis Brooks is feeling like a kid awaiting Christmas morning.
Not because the trial is going well, although he believes that it is.
Brooks has a major surprise in store for the jury. Something he was careful not to reveal in his opening statement, or any subsequent remarks. Something the defense team hasn’t mentioned, either.
But Brooks is positive it’s going to blow the damn roof off the place.
Currently, he’s wrapping up his questioning of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation special agent Scott Lott, the lead state investigator in the criminal case.
Specifically, Brooks is asking, “When you first learned about Chris, was it important to you to figure out if such a person existed?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Did you actually take some steps to contact the CIA and see if you could find a Chris who worked there?”
“I did. Eventually.”
“But you couldn’t find him?”
“No, sir.”
Brooks pauses. “You found…a Chris, though, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. After some digging, I did.”
“And he’s here today. Ain’t he?”
“Yes, sir. He is.”
Confused murmurs emanate from the gallery.
Brooks turns to Judge Blackwood. With a dramatic flourish he proclaims, “Your Honor, the state calls Chris Tjaden to the stand!”
The murmurs turn to gasps as a trim Caucasian man in his midthirties with buzzed, dark-brown hair approaches the bench to be sworn in.
“Your Honor, what is the meaning of this?!” demands defense attorney Cameron Hyder, shooting to his feet. “The prosecution spent the last two days questioning a so-called expert who tried—and failed—to convince us that ‘Chris’ was actually the alter ego of one of my clients. Now they want us to believe he’s real after all?”
Judge Blackwood crosses his arms. “I’m as curious as you are, Counsel,” he says, and lets Brooks question his surprise witness as Hyder simmers.
“Can you please state your name, occupation, and place of residence for the record?” Brooks asks the man on the witness stand.
“Christopher Tjaden. I’m a police officer in New Castle County, Delaware.”
“Do you know either of the defendants, Mr. Tjaden?”
“I do. Me and Jenelle went to high school together in Pennsylvania.”
“And how would you describe your relationship?”
“Honestly? We didn’t have one. I would say hello to her in the hall sometimes, but that’s about it. She was one of those kids who was very strange. She always had issues. She was always complaining about a problem with somebody.”
“When was the last time you had any contact with Miss Potter?”
“High school graduation. Seventeen years ago. She Facebooked me a while ago, but I never accepted her friend request.”
Brooks shows Tjaden a photo of a man wearing a black collared shirt with a gold badge pinned to his chest. It’s the “classified” photo that “Chris” first emailed to Barbara a few years ago to convince her he was who he claimed to be.
“Is this you, Mr. Tjaden?”
“Yep. That used to be my public Facebook profile picture, actually.”
“So this isn’t a top secret portrait of a covert intelligence agent?”
Chris chuckles. “Top secret? My mom took it with her cell phone.”
“Mr. Tjaden, are you currently, or have you ever been, employed by the Central Intelligence Agency in any capacity?”
“The CIA? Are you serious? No, sir.”
“Have you ever emailed either Barbara Potter or Jamie Curd anytime in the past few years?”
“I’ve never emailed with either of them in my entire life.”
Brooks rests his hands on his hips. “One final question, Mr. Tjaden. If you aren’t friends with either of the defendants…if you’ve never been in email contact with them…if you’re not a real CIA agent…how did you possibly get tangled up in this mess?”
Hyder angrily rises. “Objection. Calls for speculation.”
“I’ll allow it,” responds Judge Blackwood.
Tjaden thinks for a moment. “I’ve been wondering that from the moment Special Agent Lott over there tracked me down and knocked on my door. I think Jenelle used to have a crush on me, you know? Years later, when she was looking for a name for her crazy plot and a picture of a guy with a badge, she picked me. Why? I’ll never know.”
Brooks thanks Tjaden and takes his seat. Judge Blackwood gives Hyder the chance to cross-examine the witness, but the lawyer declines. Brooks doesn’t blame him. Every second Tjaden stays on the stand, Jenelle looks nuttier and nuttier.
Brooks is confident he’s convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that “Chris” the CIA agent was really Jenelle all along.
But will he be able to convince them that she and her mother are guilty of murder?
Chapter 32
Glimpsing Billy Payne’s father, Paw Bill, in the gallery, along with Billy’s sister, Tracy Greenwell, and Billie Jean Hayworth’s friend Lindsey Thomas, prosecutor Dennis Brooks feels the weight of his responsibility even more.
The family and friends of the victims are counting on him to deliver justice.
Taking a moment to settle his nerves, he rises and delivers his closing statement, ending the trial the same way he started it—with a clear recitation of the facts and a simple, compelling theory that ties them all together.
Yes, Brooks believes. She could have.
Indeed, rereading the emails through this new lens, Brooks is struck by “Chris’s” obsession with Jenelle’s thoughts and feelings. For an allegedly long-lost friend living hundreds of miles away, Chris seems quite familiar with Jenelle’s deepest fears and insecurities, and heaps praise on her constantly. He also seems to know exactly how to manipulate Barbara and Jamie to get the reactions from them he wants. And notably, Chris even uses many of the same expressions and makes many of the same spelling and grammar errors that Jenelle does in her own emails.
And if Jenelle really has been posing as “Chris” this whole time, Brooks feels strongly that she and Barbara both should face the consequences.
But now the question is, how in the world can he possibly prove it?
Chapter 29
June 6, 2013
Mrs. Potter, Miss Potter, thank y’all both again for doing this. I know it’s a little inconvenient, but it should really help us out.”
Chief Deputy Joe Woodard of the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department leads Barbara and Jenelle Potter down a long, fluorescent-lighted hallway.
“We’d write out the Holy Bible for y’all,” Barbara huffs, “if it would help you catch these sick people. What’s inconvenient is everything they’re doin’ to us!”
The Potter women have claimed that in the ramp-up to Buddy’s and Jamie’s murder trials, which are scheduled for the fall, they’ve begun facing new acts of harassment and some acts of minor but vindictive home vandalism. Woodard has invited them down to the station to type up their accounts in their own words, which he explains will greatly aid in his department’s investigation.
The three arrive at the open doorway of Woodard’s empty private office. He folds his hands on his belly, protruding over his gun and utility belt, and smiles.
“Hopefully this is all we’ll need. In here, please, ladies.”
Over the next hour, Barbara and Jenelle take turns sitting behind Chief Deputy Woodard’s computer typing out lengthy, detailed witness statements, while Woodard watches from an armchair against the back wall.
“These are just great,” he says, skimming their finished work on his screen. “A lot of real helpful leads here. We’ll get right on ’em.” Jenelle and Barbara start to leave. “Miss Potter, before you go, can I ask your help with one more little thing? I understand you’ve also been the victim of some online hacking in the past, ain’t that right?”
“You mean my Facebook? Yeah. A ton.”
“Well, to help us know if it happens again, can you take a gander at some of this stuff we pulled from your account and tell me if you’re the one who actually wrote it?”
Jenelle exchanges a slightly wary look with her mother, but she agrees.
Woodard gives her a pen and printout with various passages cut and pasted from her Facebook profile, including the ABOUT ME section and a handful of other posts. Jenelle reads the passages carefully. She makes a check next to nearly all of them.
“I can’t remember these two. But the rest…yeah, I wrote ’em.”
“Fantastic,” Woodard says with a clap of his hands. “We’ll be in touch real soon.”
The chief deputy escorts Jenelle and Barbara out of the building.
Then he hustles back to his office and sits down at his computer.
Assistant District Attorney General Dennis Brooks is in his office, on the phone, when an alert pops up on his screen that he’s received a new email—from Johnson County Sheriff’s Department chief deputy Joe Woodard.
Brooks pumps his fist in victory. “Hank, I gotta call you back.”
Attached to Woodard’s email is the long, rambling witness statement Jenelle Potter has just written. Also attached is a scanned copy of multiple passages from her Facebook profile that she verified she wrote herself.
Brooks can scarcely contain his excitement as he forwards the email to Dr. Robert Leonard, a professor of forensic linguistics at Hofstra University in New York, with whom he’s been in frequent contact over the last several months.
The modern digital equivalent of a handwriting expert, Dr. Leonard specializes in developing advanced computer algorithms that analyze a host of syntactic and lexical factors in order to establish “authorship identification” of unknown textual sources.
Simply put, Brooks is hoping the professor will be able to verify—and then testify—that the emails from “Chris” (as well as the derogatory Topix message board posts from various pseudonyms) were all actually penned by Jenelle.
But in order to do so, Dr. Leonard had some very stringent requirements. For one, he needed a completely original, stand-alone “K doc” (aka a document known to have been written by the suspect) to compare with the “Q docs” (aka the emails and message threads in question). Like the Q docs, the K doc had to be typed, not handwritten. It had to have been drafted by the suspect completely unassisted, not under duress, and in her own voice. And an independent observer had to be watching the entire time to ensure its authenticity.
For a while, Brooks was stumped. How in the world could he convince Jenelle to do something like that? But after he learned that the Potter women were claiming renewed harassment, it hit him. He enlisted the help of Chief Deputy Woodard, and their plan worked like a charm.
A few weeks later, Brooks receives a fateful call from Dr. Leonard.
The professor informs him that, with an extremely high degree of scientific certainty, both the Topix posts and the emails from “Chris” were indeed written by Jenelle.
It confirms Brooks’s theory. But part of him still can’t believe it—and doesn’t know if he can convince a jury—until a week later when he receives additional evidence from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
At the DA’s request, the TBI’s Department of Digital Forensics conducted further technical analysis of the many emails exchanged between Jenelle, Barbara, Jamie, and “Chris,” focusing primarily on determining the Internet Protocol addresses from which they were sent (that is, the unique string of numbers and letters that identifies a computer’s location when it’s connected to the web). It turned out that although Chris was presumably emailing from his office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia—or wherever his international jet-setting secret-agent life took him—every single one of his emails originated from the same IP address in Mountain City: Jenelle Potter’s personal computer.
Linguistically and digitally, Brooks now has his proof.
Chris is Jenelle.
Jenelle is Chris.
She’s also Matt and Kelly and Dan and Mike, for that matter.
The nasty online smear campaign against Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth was all Jenelle’s doing.
So was the sick scheme to manipulate her parents and boyfriend.
Buddy pulled the trigger.
Jamie kept watch.
Barbara encouraged it.
But the true monster in all of this was Jenelle Potter.
Chapter 30
May 2015
It sounded like such a good idea at the time.
A swing for the fences, sure. But a bold and gallant grasp at justice.
Now, driving to the courthouse for the first day of Jenelle and Barbara Potter’s joint murder trial, prosecutor Dennis Brooks is having some second thoughts.
At least there’s some comfort in knowing that, no matter what happens, Jamie will be spending decades in prison and Buddy will die there. Buddy’s open-and-shut case wrapped up about eighteen months ago, with Brooks successfully securing a double life sentence. Jamie took a plea deal and accepted twenty-five years.
But for a dedicated prosecutor like Brooks, partial justice isn’t good enough.
Still, he’s wondering whether he was right to charge both women with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder as well as actual first-degree murder.
The former charge only requires that a defendant be found to have “solicited, directed, aided or attempted to aid” someone in the commission of a homicide, which Brooks is supremely confident he’ll be able to successfully argue. He can point to dozens of emails in which Barbara, Jamie Curd, and “Chris” talk openly and excitedly about killing Billy Payne and Billie Jean Hayworth and egg one another on to do so. That’s about as clear a case of criminal conspiracy as you can get.
It’s the latter charge that Brooks is concerned about.
Jenelle and Barbara didn’t fire the gun that killed Billy and Billie Jean. They didn’t hold the knife that slit Billy’s throat. They didn’t drive with Buddy Potter to Paw Bill’s house or stand guard outside, like Jamie. On the night of the murders, neither woman was anywhere near the crime scene. In fact, it’s possible they were fast asleep.
Will a jury still be willing to convict them of first-degree murder? If not, Brooks worries, will they throw out the entire case to punish the DA’s office for overreach?
He tries to shake any lingering doubts from his mind as he climbs the stone steps of the stately county courthouse. After many months of trial delays, Brooks is finally delivering his opening statement. And he knows he only gets one shot at making a compelling first impression.
“All rise!” bellows the bailiff. “This court is now in session, the Honorable Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood presiding.”
The bald, bookish, bespectacled old judge trundles to his seat on the bench and instructs the courtroom to be seated. With no new motions or other administrative matters to deal with, he invites the prosecution to give its remarks.
Brooks rises, buttons his suit jacket, and strides toward the jury box. He glances briefly at the defendants sitting behind him, then takes a deep breath.
“There is nothing in your lives or background that has prepared you to understand the Potter family,” he says with quiet forcefulness. “You have never seen anybody like them. The story is very, very simple. It is a story of a manufactured conflict born in the mind of a very bored, lonely, thirty-year-old woman. Everything that happened…happened as the direct result of Jenelle Potter’s deeply twisted actions.”
Brooks shows the jury crime scene photos of Billy and Billie Jean lying dead in pools of their own blood. To accompany them, he reads selections from various Topix posts in which Jenelle, writing under different fake names, professes her deep-rooted hatred of the victims and her desire that they and their “bastard baby…die die die!” Then Brooks reads snippets from various emails in which Jenelle, writing as Chris, spurs her boyfriend and mother to make her homicidal fantasies a reality.
Pointing now to Jenelle and Barbara, Brooks warns that thanks to these two, the jury is in for the wildest, craziest, most unbelievable story they’ve ever heard in their lives. But every word of it is true. And there are piles of evidence to prove it.
Brooks ends his opening statement and takes his seat.
Over the course of his career, he’s learned that trying to read jurors’ faces is about as accurate as trying to read tea leaves. Nonetheless, he takes the uniform look of shock and horror on all twelve faces as a very good sign.
Until the lead defense attorney rises and gives his opening statement.
Cameron Hyder is Dennis Brooks’s polar opposite in almost every way. Where the middle-aged Brooks can be staid and avuncular, Hyder is young, vibrant, handsome, and dynamic. His slim designer suit is custom-made. His hair is perfectly gelled. His gold cuff links, embossed with his initials, sparkle under the courtroom lights.
And his opening statement brims with fire and passion.
Hyder argues that Jenelle and Barbara Potter are the real victims here. That the two women fell prey to the hacking and scheming of a demented Jamie Curd. Jealous that Jenelle loved Billy more than she loved him, Jamie was the one who convinced Barbara and Buddy to help him murder his romantic rival so he could have their daughter all to himself.
Hyder also argues that his clients are now being victimized yet again—this time by an overzealous prosecutor. The state’s computer evidence is faulty. Its linguistic “expert” is a total quack. And its central theory that Jenelle—a scared, sheltered young woman with the mental acuity of a fifth grader—is some kind of criminal mastermind? Well, that’s just utterly absurd.
Brooks hates to admit it—and definitely tries not to show it—but he finds Hyder’s opening statement alarmingly sharp and compelling.
Maybe the trial is going to be even tougher than he imagined.
Chapter 31
A few days later, Dennis Brooks is feeling like a kid awaiting Christmas morning.
Not because the trial is going well, although he believes that it is.
Brooks has a major surprise in store for the jury. Something he was careful not to reveal in his opening statement, or any subsequent remarks. Something the defense team hasn’t mentioned, either.
But Brooks is positive it’s going to blow the damn roof off the place.
Currently, he’s wrapping up his questioning of Tennessee Bureau of Investigation special agent Scott Lott, the lead state investigator in the criminal case.
Specifically, Brooks is asking, “When you first learned about Chris, was it important to you to figure out if such a person existed?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Did you actually take some steps to contact the CIA and see if you could find a Chris who worked there?”
“I did. Eventually.”
“But you couldn’t find him?”
“No, sir.”
Brooks pauses. “You found…a Chris, though, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. After some digging, I did.”
“And he’s here today. Ain’t he?”
“Yes, sir. He is.”
Confused murmurs emanate from the gallery.
Brooks turns to Judge Blackwood. With a dramatic flourish he proclaims, “Your Honor, the state calls Chris Tjaden to the stand!”
The murmurs turn to gasps as a trim Caucasian man in his midthirties with buzzed, dark-brown hair approaches the bench to be sworn in.
“Your Honor, what is the meaning of this?!” demands defense attorney Cameron Hyder, shooting to his feet. “The prosecution spent the last two days questioning a so-called expert who tried—and failed—to convince us that ‘Chris’ was actually the alter ego of one of my clients. Now they want us to believe he’s real after all?”
Judge Blackwood crosses his arms. “I’m as curious as you are, Counsel,” he says, and lets Brooks question his surprise witness as Hyder simmers.
“Can you please state your name, occupation, and place of residence for the record?” Brooks asks the man on the witness stand.
“Christopher Tjaden. I’m a police officer in New Castle County, Delaware.”
“Do you know either of the defendants, Mr. Tjaden?”
“I do. Me and Jenelle went to high school together in Pennsylvania.”
“And how would you describe your relationship?”
“Honestly? We didn’t have one. I would say hello to her in the hall sometimes, but that’s about it. She was one of those kids who was very strange. She always had issues. She was always complaining about a problem with somebody.”
“When was the last time you had any contact with Miss Potter?”
“High school graduation. Seventeen years ago. She Facebooked me a while ago, but I never accepted her friend request.”
Brooks shows Tjaden a photo of a man wearing a black collared shirt with a gold badge pinned to his chest. It’s the “classified” photo that “Chris” first emailed to Barbara a few years ago to convince her he was who he claimed to be.
“Is this you, Mr. Tjaden?”
“Yep. That used to be my public Facebook profile picture, actually.”
“So this isn’t a top secret portrait of a covert intelligence agent?”
Chris chuckles. “Top secret? My mom took it with her cell phone.”
“Mr. Tjaden, are you currently, or have you ever been, employed by the Central Intelligence Agency in any capacity?”
“The CIA? Are you serious? No, sir.”
“Have you ever emailed either Barbara Potter or Jamie Curd anytime in the past few years?”
“I’ve never emailed with either of them in my entire life.”
Brooks rests his hands on his hips. “One final question, Mr. Tjaden. If you aren’t friends with either of the defendants…if you’ve never been in email contact with them…if you’re not a real CIA agent…how did you possibly get tangled up in this mess?”
Hyder angrily rises. “Objection. Calls for speculation.”
“I’ll allow it,” responds Judge Blackwood.
Tjaden thinks for a moment. “I’ve been wondering that from the moment Special Agent Lott over there tracked me down and knocked on my door. I think Jenelle used to have a crush on me, you know? Years later, when she was looking for a name for her crazy plot and a picture of a guy with a badge, she picked me. Why? I’ll never know.”
Brooks thanks Tjaden and takes his seat. Judge Blackwood gives Hyder the chance to cross-examine the witness, but the lawyer declines. Brooks doesn’t blame him. Every second Tjaden stays on the stand, Jenelle looks nuttier and nuttier.
Brooks is confident he’s convinced the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that “Chris” the CIA agent was really Jenelle all along.
But will he be able to convince them that she and her mother are guilty of murder?
Chapter 32
Glimpsing Billy Payne’s father, Paw Bill, in the gallery, along with Billy’s sister, Tracy Greenwell, and Billie Jean Hayworth’s friend Lindsey Thomas, prosecutor Dennis Brooks feels the weight of his responsibility even more.
The family and friends of the victims are counting on him to deliver justice.
Taking a moment to settle his nerves, he rises and delivers his closing statement, ending the trial the same way he started it—with a clear recitation of the facts and a simple, compelling theory that ties them all together.
