A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases

seated and the testimony began.
    Senior Trial Deputy Jon Noll spoke for the prosecution, outlining an incredibly senseless and vicious crime and Brad Bass’s state of living death. There would be an agonizing question—a question that brought to mind the Karen Ann Quinlan case. The defense would certainly question whether twenty-one-year-old Brad Lee Bass had died as a result of an attack by the defendant, or because life support systems had been turned off.
    The first witness for the prosecution was Brad Bass’s father, a man still wracked with grief over the inexplicable tragedy that had befallen his son. The agony of parents who have lost their children in a homicide is painful to observe, yet it is often necessary for them to go through the final ordeal of recalling their child’s life for a jury.
    “Jackie” Emerson sat impassively at his trial as the prosecution presented its case. His whole posture was feminine and demure. He tiptoed daintily along on his three-inch high-heeled sandals during morning and afternoon breaks, seemingly oblivious to the stares he drew from startled onlookers. Occasionally, he patted his luxuriant wig with his painted nails or nodded to his friends in the gallery.
    During the extensive newspaper coverage of his trial, the two major Seattle papers could not agree on how to refer to him. One called him “him” and “he.” The other referred to him as “her” and “she.”
    Wes Hohlbein, a prominent criminal defense attorney, did not deny that Jackie had stabbed Brad Bass, but suggested he had done so only because he had been in fear of his life. Jackie took the stand in his own defense and explained his lifestyle to the jury.
    He said that he had been raised as a female child and had worn girls’ clothes since the age of six. “All through life it has caused me difficulties but I can’t be no other way,” he explained.
    As he had done for so many psychologists and psychiatrists, he detailed his plans for a sex change, and said he was taking female hormone treatments that made him feel more like a woman.
    Emerson said he had lived in Seattle for about eight years, and had worked as a nurses’ aide during part of that time, but admitted under cross-examination that he had been arrested “a lot of times” for prostitution and also had convictions for grand larceny and shoplifting.
    Regarding the morning of Friday, February 13, Emerson testified that he had stopped at Larry’s Take 5 at three A.M. to get food to take home and had met Brad Bass there for the first time. He said Bass had offered him $50 for an act of prostitution. He insisted that he never told Bass he was not a woman, and didn’t know why Bass became angry at him. He said that, when they got outside, Brad accused him of stealing money from him in the past.
    Jackie fluttered his eyelashes at the jury as he said he had only been trying to avoid trouble and that Brad Bass had pulled off his wig, kicked him in the groin, and threatened him with a knife. He said he’d gone back into the Take 5 to try to get a knife or some weapon to protect himself but the cook stopped him. He returned to the fight, and twisted the knife out of Bass’s hand and “stuck it to him.”
    “I was scared,” he testified huskily. “I was trying to defend myself. He was big. I was smaller than I am now,” Emerson confided.
    Jackie’s testimony left gaping holes in the truth. His story that Brad Bass carried a knife differed from every other eyewitness’s testimony, and from the testimony of Brad’s father and brother, who had testified that Brad had never carried a knife in his life. And it differed a great deal from testimony that Brad Bass had tried to avoid a fight, had been reluctant to strike out at the enraged transvestite who was flailing at him.
    It was very clear to those in the gallery that Jackie, a veteran of many mean streets and an expert at con games, had met a young man who was entirely out of his element. Only twenty-one, Brad Bass hadn’t even been experienced enough to recognize who Jackie Emerson really was, or the danger he was courting unaware. When he
did
recognize that Jackie wasn’t a woman at all, he had been disgusted and embarrassed and he’d wanted out. But Jackie wasn’t willing to shrug his shoulders and let it go. He had gone into a screaming, kicking tizzy. He had been “insulted” and he wanted revenge. Tragically, he got it.
    The jury spent fifteen hours in deliberation pondering