Practice to Deceive

it was legal for Kelly to get the records. Most reporters, however, understand that the release of too much information in the media before trial can seriously impact both the prosecution and the defense. Journalists, including myself, adhere to a kind of gentleman’s agreement to withhold certain details until a case has been adjudicated. We don’t want to hamper either side.
    Kelly felt no such constraint. Beginning in the first week of September 2011, the reporter wrote headline stories about the Russ Douglas murder. Greg Banks had been closemouthed about the widow—Brenna Douglas—as the investigation continued. Now, Kelly’s first story announced that Brenna had been the third suspect in Russ’s murder ever since 2005, but the prosecutor and sheriff had chosen not to inform the public. He also wrote some searing articles about his perceived belief that county officials were involved in political wars that muddied the waters and resulted in too many mistakes in the Douglas case.
    Of course there was information published that Greg Banks, Mark Plumberg, and Mike Beech had attempted to keep private until Peggy Sue Thomas and Jim Huden went on trial. Her attorney would have access to that through the rights of discovery—but everyone living on the island didn’t need to know that now.
    The prosecution team was not pleased with Brian Kelly’s premature reporting.
    In the twenties and thirties—long before television and the Internet offered virtually instant news—newspaper reporters were sometimes infamous for their outrageous tactics. But the era of Ben Hecht was long gone. Hecht, born at the end of the nineteenth century, was a popular journalist/reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He went on to write successful Broadway plays and scripts for Hollywood movies. In his book, A Child of the Century, Hecht wrote of the aggressive maneuvers reporters of the day employed to get exclusives before their rivals did. This included buying witnesses too many drinks, approaching the bereaved widows and families for interviews—often even before the police did—and even crawling through the windows of funeral parlors to get pictures of the recently deceased.
    Some of Brian Kelly’s reporting smacked of the Hecht school of journalism. But, then again, he was an investigative reporter and it probably went against his every instinct to wait until the cases actually went to trial.
    Prosecutor Greg Banks and lead detective Mark Plumberg were working hard to prepare for Peggy Sue’s trial now only weeks away, and Kelly’s continuing “breaking news” and revelations about things they had struggled to keep in-house wore on their nerves.
    It was surely going to be much more difficult to find prospective jurors who hadn’t already read too many details in the media—including the specifics of the hefty insurance payoffs Brenna Douglas had collected after Russ died.
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    I N TRUTH, BRENNA DIDN’T receive nearly as much from the insurance companies as gossip said. She had quite a long struggle with their underwriters, particularly when she refused to have a chunk of the money put in a trust fund for her two children, Jack and Hannah.
    Once she had her insurance payoff, she had spent most of it quickly, but not wisely. She put money down on a house—not Peggy Sue’s house—but the one she chose was foreclosed upon in less than a year. She bought an expensive SUV, and any number of items that chipped away at her bank balance.

C HAPTER T HIRTY-THREE
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    B Y OCTOBER 2011, TO almost everyone’s surprise, Peggy Sue Thomas had crossed off all the items on her to-do list: she had attended her half sister Brenda’s memorial service in Idaho, winterized all her properties, bought new clothes suitable for a fall trial, and collected documents for her attorney.
    And then she came home to Whidbey Island!
    Peggy still wore her tracking anklet, and a few of her relatives commented that they could hear it when it went off. She would have to wear it throughout her trial. She was semifree on bail, but she remained in a kind of purgatory.
    On Halloween—October 31, 2011—Peggy was arraigned and formally charged with first-degree murder. To no one’s surprise, she pled not guilty.
    Who would go to trial first? Peggy Sue Thomas and Jim Huden began a kind of musical chairs with their trial dates.
    The holiday season was almost upon them. Ten Thanksgivings and Christmases had come and gone since Russel Douglas died. Newcomers