Empty Promises

afternoon.”
    Grant responded to Helland’s questions, recalling that the girl was small, with shoulder-length curly reddish brown hair. He said she was wearing an army jacket and blue jeans. His voice became breathier and more tearful as he described the scene. “When she hit the ground and I grabbed her, she swung around on me. She saw me then. I just used my hand on her throat. She was on her knees. Her back arched and she beat me with her hands and arms, but I kept choking her until she was quiet.”
    Again, Gary Grant said he could not remember any sexual approach to his victim. “It’s like the two little kids—I come to one point and then, Bam! I’m at another point. That’s just it. I don’t know what I’ve done. Like I heard about the little kids and I wanted to go and look for them … but then when I do remember, I see up to one point and no further.”
    The prosecutors tied up their case by introducing into evidence Gary Grant’s tennis shoes and the moulages taken at the death site of the two small boys. They matched, right down to the small nicks and scratches that had come with wear.
    A girl who had once dated Grant testified that he had given her a present for her birthday, which was two weeks after Joann Zulauf’s murder. She said he had presented her with a used woman’s wristwatch. “It was made of white metal, and the brand name was Lucien Perreaux.” She testified that she used to tease him by asking him why he didn’t get paid more for the work he did, since he never seemed to have any money. “When he gave me the watch, he said, ‘See, I do get paid for the things I do.’”
    As Nick Marshall and James Anderson began their defense, it became apparent that they would make no attempt to deny their client’s guilt in the homicides but would, rather, strive to show that Gary Grant was desperately ill—a stunted, warped personality who possessed Jekyll and Hyde characteristics. Gary Grant could be a gentle, accommodating friend who displayed no violence at all, but he could also be possessed by a terrible “unconscious rage.”
    Friends testified regarding the “good” side of Grant’s personality, and two psychiatrists gave some insight into the tremendous anger that sometimes gripped him.
    Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Anderson labeled the killings “senseless” and said they might have made sense only if the victims represented hated persons from the defendant’s past. He speculated that “Grant may have had no more control over the personality who committed the murders than we do over our dreams at night.”
    Dr. George Harris classified Grant as “emotionally ill.” Both psychiatrists testified that Grant considered sex “dirty and shameful.” Through interviews with friends and relatives, the psychiatrists learned of a background riddled with violence. Grant’s navy career was short-lived; he could not adjust to what he considered harsh treatment of fellow recruits by superior officers and was discharged as “unfit for service.”
    Relatives described Gary Grant as a quiet child who was very disturbed by family fights. Often he was pushed to the breaking point by domestic altercations. The “good” Gary was reduced to tears by the death of a pet kitten and a lizard, which he tried to nurse back to health with tender care. At the mention of the death of the lizard, the defendant’s eyes filled with tears as he sat in the courtroom. It was hard to see him as an obsessed killer.
    After weeks in trial, the time had come for summations by both the prosecution and the defense. Special Prosecutor Edmund P. Allen faced the jury and calmly related the sequence of events in all four murders. The soft-spoken prosecutor recalled pertinent parts of Grant’s confessions and said, “We have an answer for everything. The only real issue in this case is whether or not to invoke the death penalty. I submit, if ever— if ever —an appropriate case existed for the death penalty, this is it.”
    Nick Marshall rose to plead for Gary Grant’s life. The red-haired former FBI agent was most accomplished at legal rhetoric. He was one of the more persuasive attorneys around.
    “You will recall,” he began, “that I warned you the evidence in this case would make you cringe—that your emotions would be right there in your throat. I will not offer you facts; I will offer you perceptions. I offer you no magic, but I appeal to you as human beings. Four lives have been lost; nothing