A Book of American Martyrs(82)

“Well. You could try to speak louder, then. Couldn’t you?”

She was trying not to react with surprise at her daughter’s vulgar expression—shitty.

This was new, in Naomi. Jenna would have to adjust.

The children were sixteen, thirteen. Not really children any longer. Childhood had ended.

She spoke with Naomi for a few more minutes with strained patience. Naomi’s replies were muffled and might have been laughter, or coughing.

Jenna listened fiercely. Possibly, Darren was there also, beside his sister, and the two were laughing at her.

Because she was their mother, and she loved them? Because they had lost the essential bond between them, that had been possible only with their father? Because they now could not escape one another?


NEAR THE END of the prosecution’s presentation, in what would be the final week of the trial, Jenna realized to her horror—It is Gus who is on trial. Not Luther Dunphy.

She’d been slow to realize this stunning fact. She’d been reluctant.

In exacting detail the succession of prosecution witnesses had described the murders, again, again, and again—but the motive for the murders, which was very carefully questioned by the prosecutor, was always questioned by the defense attorney with the consequence that the jury was hearing, repeatedly, that Luther Dunphy had acted as he had in order to “defend the defenseless.”

These were witnesses who’d seen Luther Dunphy approach Dr. Voorhees and the volunteer Barron, remove a double-barreled shotgun from inside his jacket, and begin firing with no warning. Again and again this scene was envisioned so that Jenna had become numbed by its repetition yet holding her breath, unable to breathe until the witness stepped down.

Witnesses who’d seen Luther Dunphy at the prayer vigil many times of whom some knew his name, and some did not; but all could identify him in the courtroom.

Most of these were right-to-life protesters. They were yet obliged to testify against Luther Dunphy for they had sworn to tell the truth and would be guilty of contempt of court otherwise.

And do you see the man with the shotgun here in the courtroom today? Can you point him out, please?

Yes. That’s him.

Perhaps the witness spoke with regret. Perhaps with sorrow. But there was no mistaking the identification.

So singled-out, Luther Dunphy shifted his shoulders uncomfortably. A faint flush came into his doughy face. He did not look up but stared at the table in front of him. His big hands clenched into fists on his knees. He was one who had lived his life at the margin of others’ attention. Perhaps since boyhood he had not wished to be singled out.

Among the witnesses were medical workers at the Women’s Center who’d just been arriving at the Center at the time of the shootings, who had fled to hide behind a Dumpster in terror of being shot. There were the Broome County sheriff’s deputies who’d been on guard duty at the Center that morning, whom the sudden outburst of gunfire had taken totally by surprise. There were emergency medical technicians who’d rushed to the scene of the carnage, too late to help either of the stricken men.

There was the county medical examiner, who’d drawn back the shroud from Gus Voorhees’s devastated face and upper body.

You have determined—death was instantaneous for both men?

Yes. Certainly.

She had no need to listen yet she was listening. She had no need to look at photographs of the fallen men projected on a screen yet she was looking. It was required for Gus’s sake, she thought. His terrible suffering should be shared, if at a distance. His terrible suffering should be revealed to as many witnesses as possible.

In the jury box the jurors listened, and the jurors looked. For the most part their expressions were impassive. They were very ordinary-seeming men and women—nine men, five women. (Twelve jurors, two alternates.) All white-skinned, and all middle-aged or older. Jenna would have liked to see younger jurors, and more women. (The ideal juror, from her perspective, would have been a young black woman.) She did not want to think of the power that resided in these strangers, to punish the guilty man as he deserved, to provide some measure of justice for the victims.

Mostly, Jenna tried not to observe the jurors for fear she might see something in their faces that might upset her. Tersely she’d said to a friend in Michigan, with whom she often spoke on the phone, that the jurors had seemed to her rural.

It wasn’t a joke exactly. Well yes, it was a joke. But not exactly.

On the final day of the prosecution’s case a former Catholic priest took the witness stand. Through a haze of headache pain Jenna listened with mounting alarm.

This was a hostile witness, the prosecutor had told Jenna. The ex-priest had not wanted to testify though he was an eyewitness to the shootings; he’d been served a subpoena by the district attorney and had had no choice but to cooperate, under penalty of being found in contempt of court.

Donald Stockard had left his church parish in Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1996, and had left the priesthood the following year. He’d been a protester at the Broome County Women’s Center for several months but he had not, he insisted, known Luther Dunphy by name.

“Mr. Stockard—or, excuse me, shall I say ‘Father Stockard’?”

“I am no longer a priest as I explained. ‘Mr. Stockard’ is fine.”

“And why are you no longer a priest, Mr. Stockard?”

“For a—personal reason.”