Brian Pardo and Darlie's Defense

[Goody]

I just read this article...frankly, this journalist did a better job defending Darlie than her own lawyer did...

I've never known quite what to think about Darlie re: guilt or innocence, but I have always believed that there is no way her guilt was proven beyond a reasonable doubt...as this article indicates, there are lots of doubts, lots of unanswered questions...

I think this about sums it up for Pardo. Taken from your article there.
No one questions Brian Pardo's good intentions and generosity. He is funding part of Routier's appeal and is underwriting an investigation into the case. But Pardo has a dangerous tendency toward recklessness, stating suppositions and spinning Hollywood-flavored murder scenarios as if they were fact. Pardo's detractors wonder whether he seriously seeks the truth, or is simply engaged in a midlife Walter Mitty fantasy wherein he gets to play amateur sleuth and would-be savior.

 

[Goody]

To Fritzy's Mom: Does knowing that the prosecution called all of their witnesses together for a mock trial, affect the weight you give to the credibility of their testimony? It really diminishes their believability for me - not that I think any one of them would intentionally lie to convict an innocent mother. I do believe memory is affected by discussions with others or just from the brain trying to compensate for missing accounts. I also think that witnesses would "tweak" their testimony if they believed a mother was guilty and was about to walk after butchering her two oldest sons. Who could blame them!

Does knowing that the prosecution has been doing business that way...mock trials beforehand....for over twenty years and that the DA who started the policy was none other than Mulder himself make you feel any differently about it? It would mean something if, and this is a big IF, it was not business as usual, but the truth is Darlie was not treated any differently than any other defendant in that jurisdiction. Mulder acted like he had never heard of anything so underhanded before, and he's the one who came up the idea for it years and years before Darlie's case. It is standard policy. I don't see how we can object to that.

 

[Goody]

Just a quick question - where is the info coming from that they did a mock trial? I'm not doubting that they did but it just occurred to me it is something I got told ages ago and perhaps I haven't read the original source. If there is one thing I have learnt in this case it is to read the original source rather than the second hand source because almost always the truth is either deliberately or accidentally distorted.

It wasn't really a mock trial, Dani. It was referred to in the transcript as the "dress rehearsals". The state grouped witnesses and took some of them to an empty courtroom before the trial where they got up one by one and testified. The group that did that was the police and paramedics. The nurses and doctors were another group, but they did not go to an empty courtroom. They got together at the hotel and went over testimonies. I don't think they actually practiced their testimonies like the first group but they all look at the photos, particularly of the bruises and discuss what they remembered.

 

[Goody]

I agree with you that I don't think anybody told out and out bold faced lies...but I do think much of the testimony was made with the belief that Darlie was guilty - no harm no foul if they were embellishing. I think I would be much more comfortable making my assessment of her condition at the hospital based on notes, charts, medical records, etc...(BTW, are these exhibits available anywhere?)

Check the back of MTJD. There are photocopies of them in that book.

I discounted a lot of the nurses testimonies, too, for the same reasons. I think a lot of their observations were questionable, probably colored by their belief that she was guilty. And it bothered me that none of them went back and read their professional notes before testifying. However, I couldn't discount the things they said she said. For one, I believe a person is more likely to remember that more factually than they are their observations of another's emotions, esp if they are feeling intense dislike for the person, and a lot of what they said she said was supported by other witnesses who were not nurses and medical personnel. That had a tendancy to validate their statements. The truly critical things Darlie said to people,she said to more than one person in very similar wordings. Whether she was crying or not, whether she was flat or hysterical, whether she wanted to hold Drake or not, is not terribly important. What she said about the intruder, the knife, etc is important. I don't think you can discount everything the nurses said because of that.

 

[Jeana (DP)]

It wasn't really a mock trial, Dani. It was referred to in the transcript as the "dress rehearsals". The state grouped witnesses and took some of them to an empty courtroom before the trial where they got up one by one and testified. The group that did that was the police and paramedics. The nurses and doctors were another group, but they did not go to an empty courtroom. They got together at the hotel and went over testimonies. I don't think they actually practiced their testimonies like the first group but they all look at the photos, particularly of the bruises and discuss what they remembered.

Thanks Goody. Maybe my THREE posts pointing this out and your two will help. :doh: :doh: :doh:

 

[Goody]

I think Mary has those transcripts memorized!! Isn't she awesome???

Mary is sharp as a tack. And she is hardly ever wrong. About what is documented, that is.

 

[Goody]

Usually, a publication will have "fact checkers" who do nothing but verify what is claimed in a story before it is published. No reputable paper wants to be called on its shoddy reporting. So, I'm wondering if there is contradictory testimony...where did this reporter come up with his facts? You seem to know the transcripts quite well...

I think the fact checkers went out with Bell Bottomed pants, FM. If they didn't, they must be snoozing because reporters everywhere are getting looser and looser with the truth. I hate to have to follow a trial depending on them to interpret it for me. Even the best of them reach some strange conclusions. (you see,there, Mary, I'm even nudging over to your side on this one. LOL!)

 

[Goody]

Some people say Darlie started changing her story after she realized the LE allegations against her. That may be true. I would also venture to say it's true that LE and medical personnel changed their accounts after they realized the allegations against Darlie and came to believe her guilty.

It is not supposed to be a contest between good and evil, i.e. if the state tells two lies, then defense should get two. On top of that, Darlie was the mother of these children. She should remember where the intruder was when she first saw him. But she has 4 or 5 versions of that, depending on who she was talking to and how much she wanted to embellish at any given moment.

I can give strangers a little more leeway to make mistakes in what they remember than I can a family member who knows the crime scene like the back of their hand and is emotionally involved in what happened. There is just no way that Darlie should have needed to change her story about where the intruder was when she first saw him, when she realized she was cut, when she realized her children were cut, etc. She might not remember how many towels she took to them, but she should remember if she wet them or not, if she delivered them or threw a stack of them into the next room, etc.

Yes, Darlie did start changing her story after LE started challenging her statements. In fact, it is probably safe to say that she started changing her story whenever she saw a hole in it. That is what guilty people do. They believe that they can convince the police they are not guilty and that if they do, the police will not dig too deeply to prove otherwise. That never happens, of course, but they keep trying anyway and walla, the multiple versions we end up with.

 

[Jeana (DP)]

Mary is sharp as a tack. And she is hardly ever wrong. About what is documented, that is.

LOVE your pink cowgirl smiley!!!!

 

[Goody]

Oh my, I disagree wholeheartedly. Darlie wrote her statement on 6/8/96. When Bill Parker questioned her on 6/18, he gave her the original statement and asked if she'd like to change, add, or clarify anything. Darlie read it again and said she didn't want to change a thing. Her words were, "That's exactly what happened."

Darlie didn't have a lawyer at that time, so it wasn't until later that she became aware of the evidence against her. That's when she started changing her story, stories, and more stories to fit the evidence :liar:

Sorry, Mary, I disagree this time. Darlie made her first change within minutes while still at the crime scene. She told Waddell that she struggled with the intruder in the kitchen area. Waddell even remembered her pointing out the area where they struggled, near where she was on the phone at. Then after the cops put her and Darin in the family room by the glass sliding doors, they search the house, let paramedics in, etc., she tells Walling on the front porch that she was attacked on the sofa. (When did she go back to the kitchen?)

I think something tipped her off that the story about the struggle in the kitchen was not going to work. It wasn't until she was interviewed at the hospital that she comes up with the Damon/Mommie,Mommie, Mommie story. Also, a couple of things were changed when she was at the house for her first visit. One, Frosch (not in the transcripts) heard her ask Darin if he remembered her throwing the towels to him in one big stack from the kitchen. We didn't get to hear that because Frosch didn't testify because of the cemetery dibacle.

People say she added the wet towel story after she saw the sink and plumbing gone on that visit, but I don't think it was until later that she realized how important that was. Probably not until her atty asked her about it. I don't remember exactly when the wet towel story was first brought up. Do you? Was it at the trial? Well, anyway Darlie was constantly working on her story, polishing it and editing it. Everyone she talked to had a different version and they could only do that if she was telling everyone a different story. I think she was constantly trying to plug holes and up the drama.

 

[Goody]

Denise Faulk is proof positive that LE leaked their suspicions to the nursing staff...

Denise went home and wrote down her impressions of Darlie because she thought some of what Darlie had told her was "weird." And, she just happened to store those notes away in her safe until LE contacted her. RIGHT! Denise Faulk wrote down her story for one reason and one reason only - to aid LE...Denise Faulk KNEW that Darlie was a suspect and she KNEW that one day she might be called to testify...
!

I disagree. It was no secret that the children were murdered and that it was going to be a high profile case. Suspicion always falls on the surviving parent. Denise was no stranger to working with police and I am sure she knew how important her observations might be one day if it turned out that Darlie was guilty. So she kept a diary. Good for her. I don't even think her diary was admitted into evidence, was it?

As a health care provider, Denise Faulk's job is to provide any and all pertinent information/observations about her patient in her notes/patient's chart; her personal bias cannot be expressed there, so she took it home and recorded it. Do you think for one minute she would have done this had she not been told Darlie was a suspect? If LE had acted like Darlie was a victim, do you think she'd have notes at home saying that her story was "weird?" No way...!

Yes. Denise acted on her own instincts. It did not take a mind reader to see that Darlie was not reacting like most grieving mothers do. There would be a reason for that. Everyone who came around her except her family thought she was probably guilty. Why? Because we know that thugs do not go into someone's house at random just to kill two sleeping kids and just take a slash at the sleeping Mother. The whole intruder/burglar/rapist story was ridiculous unless you are willing to believe Beevis and Butthead were involved.

And even if LE did imply they thought Darlie guilty (although even Darlie says they never let on to her that they thought she did it), the worst the nurse testimony did (except for what they said she said) was not strong enough to convict her on. Maybe it colored some jurors minds, but I doubt that they would have influenced all 12. There was a lot of character type testimony that did not flatter Darlie, but if we can see through it, why do you believe a jury couldn't? They were just as adult as we are.

]

 

[Goody]

I was involved in a serious car accident two years ago May 1st (his fault, not mine) and I STILL don't know everything that happened. When you go through something as traumatic as that, your memory comes back in "flashes" - it truly does. There is no way I could give you the minutia of the events - how fast I was going before the accident, what was playing on the radio, what time it was, where my hands were, etc. - even though I was asked repeatedly about it. And, yes, LE does "feed" you information - "Did you ever see a green car coming from the north?" "Did you at any time smell alcohol?" "Are you sure the man got out and ran to the northwest corner?"

I don't believe this traumatic amnesia is the joke some people seem to think it is - I HAVE IT! I also know that you can have differing memories (sometimes incorrect) and that you can confuse the sequence of certain events and forget others altogether...I have no reason to not tell exactly what I experienced and exactly what I did - I just can't, to this day, do it.

Did you have a serious head injury?

 

[Goody]

LOVE your pink cowgirl smiley!!!!

Thanks. I was disappointed that it would only post a link though.

 

[Goody]

That's just it, it wasn't a mock trial. A mock trial is just that. An entire trial, complete with prosecution, defense, judge, witnesses. This was merely the prosecution preparing its witnesses. There's nothing wrong with preparing witnesses. I'm sure the defense did the same.

I wonder who started that mock trial thing. El Jeffe maybe. LOL! Mulder referred to it as a dress rehearsal.

 

[Mary456]

And she is hardly ever wrong. About what is documented, that is.

To borrow the most overused line from the big screen: "And what is that supposed to mean?" LOL!

I think I know what you're referring to. You believe Darin might have been involved in the attack and/or helped Darlie stage the crime scene. I've tried and tried, but just don't see it as a likely scenario. As weird as Darin is, his story of coming down the stairs & thinking Devon had been cut by the overturned coffee table rings true to me.

 

[Mary456]

Sorry, Mary, I disagree this time. Darlie made her first change within minutes while still at the crime scene. She told Waddell that she struggled with the intruder in the kitchen area. Waddell even remembered her pointing out the area where they struggled, near where she was on the phone at. Then after the cops put her and Darin in the family room by the glass sliding doors, they search the house, let paramedics in, etc., she tells Walling on the front porch that she was attacked on the sofa. (When did she go back to the kitchen?)

I think something tipped her off that the story about the struggle in the kitchen was not going to work. It wasn't until she was interviewed at the hospital that she comes up with the Damon/Mommie,Mommie, Mommie story. Also, a couple of things were changed when she was at the house for her first visit. One, Frosch (not in the transcripts) heard her ask Darin if he remembered her throwing the towels to him in one big stack from the kitchen. We didn't get to hear that because Frosch didn't testify because of the cemetery dibacle.

People say she added the wet towel story after she saw the sink and plumbing gone on that visit, but I don't think it was until later that she realized how important that was. Probably not until her atty asked her about it. I don't remember exactly when the wet towel story was first brought up. Do you? Was it at the trial? Well, anyway Darlie was constantly working on her story, polishing it and editing it. Everyone she talked to had a different version and they could only do that if she was telling everyone a different story. I think she was constantly trying to plug holes and up the drama.

Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well. I was referring to her written statement. One of the accusations made by supporters is that Darlie wasn't given the same opportunity as the police to write a supplemental report. I just wanted to point out that she had that opportunity on 6/18 and decided to stick with her original statement.

I agree with you that she changed her oral stories many times, beginning with Waddell and Walling and continuing on with anyone who would listen.

As far as the wet towels go, the first I remembering her mentioning that was in her meeting with Dr. Clayton, which was shortly before the trial began.

 

[Mary456]

"Nahhhhh, the testimony the medical personnel gave was almost exclusively subjective - their notes, their interpretations of their notes, their impressions of Darlie, their observations of Darlie, their opinions, etc. This type of testimony is virtually impossible to prove as being false."

Putting aside their "subjective" feelings about Darlie's demeanor, do you think those 7 doctors and nurses gossiped enough to overlooked her bruises? That's not a subjective issue. There is either redness, swelling, or bruises to the right arm or there is not. All of them testified that they would have seen some sign of blunt trauma in the 2 1/2 days she was in the hospital, but it wasn't there. Even Dr. DiMaio conceded that the bruises photographed on 6/10 "look to be a couple of days old."

This was a critical piece of evidence against Darlie, because it showed that the blunt trauma didn't occur the night of 6/6/96. I believe she caused those bruises herself - perhaps by slamming her arm against a hard surface - after she left the hospital. Why? Because she told too many people that she was "fighting" and "struggling" with an intruder, and she needed a few good bruises to bolster her story.

 

[Fritzy's Mom]

Quite possibly she does have some form of TA or is it motivated forgetting? It's sometimes rooted in guilt. If I stabbed my kids, I wouldn't want to remember it either.

If Darlie killed those two little boys and then cut herself up, she remembers it. There's a BIG difference between being the victim of a traumatic event and being the one who intentionally caused it.

What about all those letters she wrote from jail telling her friends and family she knew who it was, she saw him? What was that all about? She later blamed that on someone else, saying they gave her false memories or something stupid I can't remember.

She blamed it on reports that she was getting from defense investigators...and yeah, that testimony sounded pretty shaky. IF Darlie was telling the truth, then she was pretty feeble minded at that point - she was having a difficult time differentiating between dreams, false memories, investigator reports and reality.

 

[Fritzy's Mom]

I think this about sums it up for Pardo. Taken from your article there.
No one questions Brian Pardo's good intentions and generosity. He is funding part of Routier's appeal and is underwriting an investigation into the case. But Pardo has a dangerous tendency toward recklessness, stating suppositions and spinning Hollywood-flavored murder scenarios as if they were fact. Pardo's detractors wonder whether he seriously seeks the truth, or is simply engaged in a midlife Walter Mitty fantasy wherein he gets to play amateur sleuth and would-be savior.

I don't know anything about Brian Pardo except what I read in that article, so I really have no opinion of him one way or the other...you probably have to be from Texas...

I do wonder, though, if he asked Darlie to take a polygraph. Since he insisted that Darin take one, I would think he would do the same for her. And, since he blabbed the results of Darin's all over the place, why didn't he do the same for Darlie?

 

[Fritzy's Mom]

Check the back of MTJD. There are photocopies of them in that book.

Nowhere on the internet, though, huh?

I think a lot of their observations were questionable, probably colored by their belief that she was guilty.

Absolutely.

However, I couldn't discount the things they said she said. For one, I believe a person is more likely to remember that more factually than they are their observations of another's emotions, esp if they are feeling intense dislike for the person, and a lot of what they said she said was supported by other witnesses who were not nurses and medical personnel. That had a tendancy to validate their statements. The truly critical things Darlie said to people,she said to more than one person in very similar wordings. Whether she was crying or not, whether she was flat or hysterical, whether she wanted to hold Drake or not, is not terribly important. What she said about the intruder, the knife, etc is important. I don't think you can discount

everything the nurses said because of that.

Well, it depends on whether or not you want to give her the benefit of a doubt...

If you want to believe Darlie is guilty, then, yes, the medical testimony is very damning...

If, on the other hand, you want to try to presume her innocent, then the changes in her story can be ascribed to any number of things - false testimony by the medical personnel, trauma, possible loss of consciousness during the attack, medication, honest mistakes, etc.