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Knights
in Dirty
Armour
" No Goodbyes.... No Grieving Time... "
A repenting family member revealed what transpired in the
hospital hallway outside the PICU waiting room following the
promise, “I’ll … see to it that you go down for
murder”.
“You want to nail John? I’ll nail him. Guaranteed. It will cost Gilda a few
days in jail, but that won’t hurt her. When she thinks she’s
going to prison, she’ll turn on him and say anything I tell her to
say. You just leave
it to me. I’ll nail
John to the wall, and Gilda won’t have to stay in jail too
long. Trust
me.”
One should be
able to trust our public officials, especially our law
enforcement. Trust
them to do what is right, to uphold the law, and to protect
us. They are our
watchdogs. We need
them to guard us.
Theirs is an honorable profession and a dangerous one. Like their military
counterparts, they serve us well, but occasionally, there is a
rogue. A
defective. Sometimes
causing a watchdog to turn on his own master, and if one is not safe, no one is
safe.
Within five minutes
of signing the permission form under Dr. Barton’s sway, all the
life support equipment and monitors were removed from Benjamin and
wheeled out of the room, along with the gurney on which Benjamin
had been laying. Only
two chairs, a small end table, and a fresh hospital bed were left.
The Stanart family, including Marie and I, were allowed to hold
Benjamin.
I was the last to hold him. He was cradled in my arms
as I sat in one of the two chairs; Marie in the other, unable to
restrain her grief.
Two family
members were patiently waiting for us at the open door when
George Klatt pushed them aside, camera in hand, came into the
room, and barked at me, “What the hell do you think you’re
doing?”
“I’m holding my son.”
“That isn’t
yours; it’s
mine.” Pointing at
me, then the bed, continuing … “You put it on that bed right now
and get the hell out of here”.
I gently laid Ben on his back on the clean bed, kissed him
on the bridge of his nose and whispered, “Goodbye, Ben”, and Marie
and I left the room.
16
George
Klatt closed the door behind us and pulled the privacy drapes to
conceal such a repulsive rape of Ben’s warm little body, that the
totality of which would not be revealed for over three
years.
“Your Honor, we object to these photographs the State is
presenting to show the jury.
These photographs are so gruesome, no media would print
them. The prejudicial
damage already done by showing them to witnesses and potential
witnesses is
irreparable.”8
“The Supreme Court has ruled that the State may present
some autopsy photographs in limited cases for specific purposes,
but these are not autopsy photographs. Even those are not as
gruesome as these.
Whoever took these, staged them for the sole purpose of
horrifying whoever would see them. These are comparable to
photographs of atrocities to babies in Viet Nam. The laws of common decency
dictate that these photographs should not be
shown.”
The State’s response was that if the defense is allowed to
suppress these disgusting photographs, then the State (Ramsey)
should be allowed to “Pick and choose” which photographs the
defense presented.9
Consequently, we were allowed to show photographs of the
exterior of our home.
No concrete evidence that there was any furniture in
the house.
The photographs presented to the court were taken by George
Klatt, taken of our Benjamin on the fresh hospital bed where I had
laid him.
However, Ben was not as I had left him. The State’s
photographs showed Ben’s turbin had been removed, his body was
twisted like a pretzel in several positions to show brain material
outside the skull, blood splattered to such an extent it appeared
as being the site of a slaughter. Photographs to fit the
description George Klatt had told witnesses Vallerie Millikin,
Shelly Young, jury foreman Curtis Nichols, Wilma Headrix and
several friends and neighbours that he showed these gruesome
photographs to: “This
is what happened to Ben when John beat his head against the
bedpost.”
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