Empty Promises

and cry.
    “Tears are there,” Arnold said, “but they just don’t want to come.”
    Once Arnold started to confess to his cell mate, his words bubbled over. He also admitted killing Summer Rogers. He said he was angry at Summer because she wore only a bathing suit that day. That, too, reminded him that he had never had sex.
    “He told me he hit her on the head with a rock and then cut off her head and arms and legs with his fishing knife,” Arnold’s cell mate told the Seattle detectives. “He said, ‘They had to let me go in Oregon due to lack of evidence … thank God.’ ”
    The informant begged to be moved to another cell; he could not bear to look at Arnold, knowing what he knew. His request was granted. The man had never heard of Summer Rogers and he couldn’t have known the details of her death unless Arnold had told him, but when Don Cameron and Danny Melton talked to Arnold about Summer’s murder, he denied having any part of it. “She fell on a rock and hurt her head, and she stopped breathing,” he insisted stubbornly.
    Melton asked him about his true motivation for killing his niece. “Was it because you have never had sexual intercourse?”
    Arnold nodded. “I get angry when people talk about sex, because I’ve never had it myself. I don’t know why it makes me angry to see kids with hardly any clothes on.”
    “How could you see she only had panties and a shirt on?” Melton pressed. “Wasn’t she in bed, covered up?”
    “The blankets were kicked off.”
    “Did you ejaculate during the time you were choking her with a rope?”
    Arnold shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it.
    “And Summer Rogers? You say you didn’t hit Summer?”
    “No. She fell on a rock. I only feel it was my fault because I should have gotten help. And I didn’t cut her up. If you give me a lie test, you’ll see I didn’t!”
    Arnold said he felt sorry and depressed because of what he had done to his niece. He said he couldn’t eat. Still, he seemed calm and his voice remained flat and void of emotion.
    Arnold Brown was charged with aggravated murder in the first degree, a capital crime in Washington State. There were many legal battles ahead, and his family stuck by him as always. Even his sister and brother-in-law, Jannie’s parents, sent word that they were behind him. Once more, he was forgiven for having committed an unthinkable crime. The family retained Tony Savage, one of Seattle’s top-ranked criminal defense attorneys.
    Preliminary hearings began before King County Superior Court Judge Liem Tuai in mid-September 1981. The crux of the defense’s argument was that the statements given by Arnold’s cell mate, his own oral and written confessions, and his previous criminal history should not be admissible evidence. King County Deputy Prosecutor Rebecca Roe held that all of the above were part and parcel of the case at hand. They showed who Arnold Brown really was and what his obsessions were.
    Judge Tuai ruled that the conviction for the stabbing of the Coleman children would not be admissible during the trial phase, but that Arnold’s statements made to his cell mate would be, notably the alleged admission that he had killed Summer Rogers. It took five days to select a jury of eight women and five men. It would be a bifurcated trial: if the jurors found Arnold Brown guilty, there would be a second part of the trial, where they could decide whether he should be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, or whether he should die by hanging or lethal injection.
    Arnold sat throughout his trial with one hand to his face, which remained vacant of emotion as the prosecution presented devastating evidence against him. The proceedings took only two days: Defense Attorney Tony Savage presented no witnesses. He didn’t deny that Brown had killed Jannie Reilly. He attempted only to remove the premeditation portion of the charges and thus save Arnold Brown from death.
    The jury returned a verdict of guilty. The penalty phase of the trial began. In the second segment, prior bad acts committed by Arnold Brown were admissible. His long record of vicious crimes against children spilled out. Some jurors showed shock as they heard Arnold’s history of sexually aberrant offenses. They even heard from some of his victims.
    Maria Coleman, who had survived the thrusts of Arnold’s hunting knife, was twenty-one now, but she broke into tears as she described what had happened to her