Don’t Look Behind You

inscribed.
    Prosecuting the case from King County prosecutor Chris Bayley’s office were deputy prosecutors Roy Howson and Douglas Dunham. Because Vinetti could not afford to employ counsel for his own defense, two extremelycapable lawyers on the permanent staff of the King County Public Defender’s Office were retained for him; they were Frank Sullivan and Rich Brothers. They would not deny that the beating had taken place but they would deny vigorously that Vinetti had thrown Mrs. Stokesberry into the lake, causing her death by drowning. Further, they would attempt to establish proof of “diminished responsibility” on the part of the defendant—the result of a long-standing mental disorder triggered by a daylong drinking marathon and marijuana binge on July 3.
    I attended every day of Paul Vinetti’s trial. I remember that I wanted to take a picture of him to include with the article I wrote about the case. He agreed right away—but he said he would pose only if I would stand beside him afterward so he could get a photograph of the two of us together.
    It seemed only fair. I recall that the top of my head came just above his elbow. I don’t have the picture I took of him any longer; I don’t know if he still has the image of the two of us smiling for the camera that the court deputy held.
    The rail in front of Judge Holman’s bench became cluttered with piece after piece of physical evidence—macabre physical evidence, the tattered and bloodstained remnants of the new outfit Bethany Stokesberry had proudly shown off only hours before her death and Paul Vinetti’s heavy black boots with metal cleats on the heels.
    A score of witnesses appeared for the prosecution to recall again the holiday atmosphere in the Frontier Tavern on the Fourth of July weekend. All of them confirmed that Long-tall-Paul Vinetti had appeared sober at that time.
    Sheriff’s investigators testified to the bloody scene beside Echo Lake and to the recovery of the victim’s beaten body from deep water not far from shore.
    Attorney Rich Brothers made the opening statement for the defense. Brothers, under thirty at the time, was already an accomplished criminal defense attorney. It was obvious that he had spent as many hours preparing for the defense of an indigent client as he would were he in private practice. He would now detail to the jury the events on that day of death and the horrendous life the huge defendant had endured in his twenty-three years.
    “We don’t deny that an assault took place,” Brothers told the jury. “But we are going to show you that there was no design to effect the death of Bethany Stokesberry. There was no intent to defraud or to take money.” (Vinetti had also been charged with grand larceny in the alleged theft of the victim’s money.)
    Brothers gave the time line of Vinetti’s day on Saturday, July 3. He had begun by drinking several pitchers of beer in Melby’s Tavern well before noon. And he had progressed through more beer in seven other taverns.
    Brothers described Vinetti as a man who was “a loner, moody, depressed,” who had been deserted by his own mother at the age of six months. The defendant’s father told him once: “Your mother had a choice between you and a pair of roller skates, and she took the roller skates.”
    His attorney explained Vinetti’s extreme sensitivity to remarks about his height. He said that Bethany Stokesberry had taunted Paul about the two things that distressed him most: his mother and his height.
    In many murder trials, the defendant does not take the stand in his own defense, but Long-tall-Paul Vinetti chose to do so. There, before a courtroom hushed so that spectators could hear his muted voice, he answered his attorney’s questions about the events on July 3.
    “I went to Melby’s Tavern at ten thirty Saturday morning. I had about four beers before the others came in.”
    (The “others” were an Edmonds, Washington, couple and their nephew who had joined Vinetti in the long day of drinking.)
    “Then we went to the Forum Tavern and they waited while I went to my friends to look for some stuff.”
    “Stuff?”
    “Pills. Acid. Mescaline. Speed. But I didn’t find any.”
    The defendant told of going next to Smokey Joe’s, Tiger Al’s, The Hideout, Blue Moon—and then back to Melby’s. And finally, to the Frontier. He said he’d smoked almost an entire lid of marijuana—sharing it with a man whose name he couldn’t recall—as the day