The Absence of Motive

JOHN GRISHAM

When Joe Bryan was in the second grade he met his future wife, Mickey Blue, who was in the first. Obviously too young to even think about a romance, they nonetheless kept an eye on each other as they grew up in their small, neighboring Texas towns. Mickey was popular in school but very quiet and studious. Joe seldom met a stranger and thrived on interaction with others. He often had the impression that he was watching Mickey a lot more than she was noticing him. As teenagers, Mickey dated Joe's twin brother and he dated her cousin. Other romances came and went, and at some point they realized they were dating the wrong people. When Joe finally asked her out she quickly accepted and within weeks they were inseparable.

Both wanted to be teachers and went away to different colleges with the same goal. They loved children and believed that learning was the key to happy, successful lives. When they married in 1969, Mickey taught in an elementary school and Joe taught Latin and English and coached the swim team. He had a small faculty apartment and they spent some of their happiest years there. Their lives were consumed with each other and the kids they taught. They dreamed of starting their own family, but after three years of marriage received the sad news that Mickey could not bear children. They were devastated, but this made them even closer.

In 1975, they returned to Mickey's hometown of Clifton, Texas. Her parents still lived there and the family was respected and well known.

Mickey had been voted Miss Clifton High her senior year and she quickly renewed old friendships. She got a job as a fourth-grade teacher and Joe became the high school principal. They loved living in Clifton and were active in the community, especially the First Baptist Church and, of course, the schools.

Joe was out almost every night at some school function. He never missed a football game, home or away, and Mickey was usually with him. Their days revolved around their classes, their students, and school activities. They were rarely apart and were often seen taking their long evening walks through Clifton. At home, Joe often helped Mickey grade papers and prepare lessons.

He even helped her decorate her classrooms.

With no children at home, they doted on one another and were determined to keep their marriage fresh. They watched so many of their married friends drift apart with time, pulled in different directions by children and careers. They stayed close to their families and were always ready for another gathering. For Thanksgiving each year, Joe and Mickey hosted her family for a traditional dinner, and for each Christmas they visited his family for the festivities.

—

Mickey was always the first teacher to arrive at Clifton Elementary School, often at her desk at 7:00 a.m. She enjoyed the quiet of the early morning before the real day began and the hallways were filled with the eager voices of young students.

On Tuesday, October 15, 1985, Mickey did not arrive at the school.

Oddly, her classroom was still dark and empty when a colleague, Susan Kleine, a fifth-grade teacher, walked by and noticed the door was closed. It was also locked, and Susan assumed Mickey was in the copy room on the other side of the building. At 8:00 a.m. , though, there was still no sign of Mickey, and Susan knew something was wrong. She hurried to the office of the principal, Rex Daniels, and informed him Mickey was absent. Susan assumed she had called in sick and Rex had forgotten to summon a substitute.

But Rex said he had not heard from Mickey. His first inclination was to call Joe, but he remembered that his friend was out of town.

Joe, in fact, was 120 miles away in Austin, attending the annual gathering of the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals. He had spoken to Mickey at 9:00 p.m. the night before when he called from his hotel room in Austin. As always, he had told her he loved her, and that he would be home the following afternoon.

Rex asked his secretary to call the Bryan home, which she did, but there was no answer. He asked her to call Mickey's parents, Otis and Vera Blue, who lived nearby. They answered the phone, said they had no idea where Mickey was but assumed she was at work. They had seen her the previous afternoon when she had stopped by. They left immediately to go check on her.

As did Rex Daniels, who arrived at the Bryans' first and saw that Mickey's car was parked in the garage. The morning papers lay in the driveway. He rang the doorbell but no one answered. The Blues arrived with a key and they all went inside. Vera went first and called her daughter's name. When she stepped into the master bedroom, she screamed at a ghastly sight.

Blood was splattered across the ceiling and four walls. Mickey lay across the bed, covered in blood, obviously dead. Rex grabbed Vera and Otis, led them to the living room, and sat them on a sofa. They were horrified, inconsolable, almost unable to speak. Rex returned to the doorway of the bedroom but did not step inside. For a moment he looked at Mickey's body lying across the unmade bed. She was naked from the waist down and her pink nightgown was pulled up to her thighs.

Rex managed to gather himself, found the phone in the kitchen, and called the police.

Around 10:00 a.m. , as Joe was attending a session of the conference in Austin, Harold Massey, the organization's executive director and a longtime friend, asked Joe to step outside the room. In a foyer, Massey told Joe that his wife had been shot to death in their home. Joe fell into a chair and mumbled, "Mickey Bryan of Clifton, Texas?" Three other principals who knew Joe well helped him upstairs to his room where he lay in the bed, shivering in his suit and tie.

Clifton was at least two hours from Austin, a fact that would become important later. Joe was in no condition to drive. Two friends from Clifton arrived around noon to take him home, and when he saw them he broke down and began crying again. One friend later recalled, "Very little was said. Joe sat in the back with his head down and cried the whole way."

As they entered Clifton, Joe looked out the window at the streets and houses and buildings he knew so well, and dreaded the awful moment when he arrived at the home he and his beloved Mickey had built ten years earlier. As they approached it, the first thing he noticed was the police cars parked everywhere. Law enforcement officers were crawling all over the place and the bright yellow crime scene tape was strung around trees and light poles. City policemen, county deputies, state troopers, and crime scene technicians were busy with the investigation. The fabled Texas Rangers were already on-site, always ready to help the local boys with a homicide investigation.

The neighbors watched in muted disbelief. Word of the murder had spread quickly, as it always does in a small town. Joe recognized the sad and frightened faces of his people.

Still stunned and sleepwalking, Joe gamely tried to answer the first wave of questions from the investigators. Yes, he kept a gun in the house, a .357 Magnum pistol loaded with birdshot to kill rattlesnakes and copperheads that sometimes got too close. He told them he and Mickey kept $1,000 in cash in a metal box.

After a few more questions, Joe was driven to the home of Vera and Otis Blue, where shocked and grief-stricken friends were gathering. When Joe saw Susan Kleine, he asked her again and again, "What am I going to do without Mickey?"

Later that night, Joe went to his mother's home in the small town of Elm Mott, forty miles away near Waco. Distraught, bewildered, and emotionally spent, he lay awake in bed and kept asking himself, Who in the world would want to hurt Mickey? And why?

—

At the crime scene, investigators worked feverishly late into the night.

Some details emerged: Mickey had been shot four times at close range; Joe's .357 Magnum was missing; lead pellets were in Mickey's wounds and all over the bedroom, indicating the pistol was probably the murder weapon; there were no witnesses; the neighbors had heard and seen nothing; there were no suspicious fingerprints; no boot or shoe prints; no semen was found with vaginal swabs; there were no signs of forced entry into the home; a cigarette butt was found on the kitchen floor, though neither Mickey nor Joe smoked.

When the investigators realized that Mickey's gold wedding band, watch, and diamond ring were missing, along with Joe's pistol, they assumed she had been the victim of a burglary-turned-homicide. But there was little evidence to support this theory, or any other for that matter.

They found few clues. Mickey's body was removed, leaving behind a blood-soaked mattress and carpet and a bedroom splattered with blood. The sheer volume of blood convinced the police that they needed an expert.

Robert Thorman was a detective with the police department in nearby Bell County, and four months earlier had received his certificate as an expert in "bloodstain pattern analysis." The Bryan murder was his first fee-paying job moonlighting as an expert. Through the good-ole-boy network of police and sheriffs, word was out that Thorman had passed his tests, got his diploma, and could now study bloodstains and see things invisible to other investigators.

Those who practiced bloodstain analysis, at least in 1985, believed that a bloody crime scene was filled with clues as to what happened and who-done-it. By carefully analyzing the drops, spatters, sprays, drippings, trails, prints, and smudges of the victim's blood, a seasoned expert could find crucial evidence.

Thorman had been certified after taking a one-week, forty-hour crash course for which he paid four hundred dollars to a private company that specialized in training "experts" in all types of forensic disciplines. His classes were held in a hotel ballroom in Beaumont, and, remarkably, every "student" in the class earned high marks, got the certificate, and was ready to testify.

When Thorman arrived at the Bryan home Tuesday night, he immediately went to work doing what he had just learned in the hotel ballroom. He studied the specks of blood scattered around the walls. He took photographs. He tacked strings here and there, took measurements, and spent over two hours in the bedroom.

But his thorough examination yielded nothing of substance. His visit produced little, but he would be back.

What it did not yield would become far more significant. Like most homeowners, Joe and Mickey owned an assortment of flashlights—large and small, old and new, close at hand but rarely to be found when needed.

No flashlight was found at the crime scene. Joe and Mickey's bedroom was searched from top to bottom for hours by different investigators, including the expert Thorman, and not a single person ever mentioned a flashlight.

One of the Bryans' flashlights, though, would become a crucial piece of evidence, its significance exaggerated by the investigators.

—

When Joe was overcome with fatigue, he fell asleep, only to be awakened by another nightmare. This can't be true, he kept telling himself. After a fitful night, he finally got out of bed Wednesday morning and braced himself for another awful day.

His first chore was to visit the funeral home to discuss the arrangements for burying his wife. While he was there he was told that Joe Wilie wanted to talk to him. Joe was driven to the police station and entered, without a lawyer. Taking a lawyer had never crossed his mind.

Wilie was a former state trooper who had been promoted to the Texas Rangers, the state's elite and legendary crime-fighting unit. Typical of a Ranger, Wilie carried himself with a self-assurance that some considered cockiness, an aura of believing that he could solve any murder. He began the conversation by asking Joe some routine questions about his life with Mickey. Joe, fatigued and emotionally spent, was initially struck by Wilie's total lack of sympathy. Peering from under the brim of his obligatory white Stetson cowboy hat, he was brusque, cocksure, and to the point. No one observing would've had a clue that the Ranger was talking to a man whose wife had just been brutally murdered.

Joe wanted to know how the investigation was going. Dammit, he wanted to know who killed his wife. But Wilie was tight-lipped and gave almost no details. He did say they had found the metal box but there was no cash in it. No, Joe had no theories about who might have wanted to kill Mickey. He still could not believe anyone would want to.

As unpleasant as it was, the interview was not confrontational. The accusations would come later.

—

Unknown to Joe, and without his consent, the investigators had removed from the home all of the Bryans' valuable papers and documents: bank statements, insurance policies, checkbooks, bills, wills, virtually everything. The bank statements revealed a frugal lifestyle that came as no surprise. Joe and Mickey saved their money and had about $35,000 in various accounts. The mortgage on their home was approximately $36,000 and covered with a life insurance policy. Upon the death of one, the mortgage would be paid off. The couple had purchased inexpensive term life insurance policies on each other for about $150,000. Their retirement benefits through the Texas Teacher Retirement System were $26,000, payable to the survivor.

Joe would see none of the money.

—

The murder of a well-known person is shocking news regardless of where it happens, but in a place like Clifton, with 3,000 people, practically all of whom knew one another, Mickey's death was impossible to digest. A local girl from a fine family, a much admired and beloved schoolteacher, and the wife of a popular school principal—if she wasn't safe, then who was? Mickey Bryan's murder was terrifying.

Adding to the fear that gripped Clifton was the haunting death of another woman only four months earlier. Back in June, Joe Wilie was called to Clifton to investigate the murder of Judy Whitley, a seventeen-year-old whose nude body was found in a thicket less than a mile from the Bryan home. The teenager had been bound, gagged, raped, and murdered by suffocation.

Were the two murders linked? For a safe, peaceful community with little serious crime, the news of Mickey's death jolted an already jittery population. And it put even more pressure on Joe Wilie and his team of investigators. The truth was that they had no solid clues. They were working around the clock and chasing every lead, but so far had nothing.

Then Charlie Blue entered the picture. Charlie was Mickey's older brother, who lived in Florida where he was a vice president of an agrochemical company. On Tuesday, upon learning of his sister's death, he flew from Florida to Texas and drove to Clifton.

According to Joe, Mickey and Charlie had never been close. He was an aggressive corporate executive accustomed to being in charge and getting his way, a marked contrast to Mickey's quiet and unassuming personality. As brothers-in-law, Joe and Charlie managed to get along but gave each other plenty of space. There was no animosity in the family. Charlie lived a thousand miles away and they seldom got together.

Charlie stayed with his parents, Vera and Otis, and cared for them as the family mourned. He asked Joe if he could borrow his car, a Mercury, while he was in town and Joe was happy to oblige. Joe was still in no shape to drive and was being ushered around by family members. By Friday, the day after the funeral, Charlie was frustrated by the investigation's lack of progress and decided to do something about it. His company had on retainer a retired FBI agent named Bud Saunders, who worked as a private detective. Charlie called Saunders and asked him to drive to Clifton, said there were some things that were bothering him about Mickey's death. He told neither Joe Bryan nor Joe Wilie that he was bringing in his own private investigator.

Saunders arrived in town Saturday afternoon and met Charlie at the Dairy Queen. They got into Joe Bryan's Mercury and went for a long ride to discuss the case. Somewhere out in the countryside, they stopped to relieve themselves beside the road. In the process, Saunders stepped in some mud and soiled his boots. Looking for a cleaning rag, Charlie opened the trunk. There, in a cardboard box, was a flashlight with the lens pointing up. There were tiny specks of something on the lens. Charlie took it and looked it over. As a corporate executive, he had zero experience with bloodstains or crime scenes, but nonetheless surmised that the tiny specks were droplets of blood. He gave it to Saunders, who readily agreed. They drove back to Clifton and called the Rangers from a pay phone.

Late that night, still Saturday, Joe Wilie executed a search warrant on Joe Bryan's Mercury. The flashlight was taken and sent to the state crime lab for analysis. The car itself was in immaculate condition, with no bloodstains inside or out. Joe loathed a dirty car.

Wilie released the Mercury to Charlie, who drove it to the Bryan home and left it in the driveway around 4:00 a.m. Sunday. He and Saunders then left town. Charlie caught a flight from Austin to Tampa.

Joe Bryan knew nothing about any of this. When he picked up his car Sunday afternoon, it had been out of his possession for four days and had been thoroughly searched by Joe Wilie and his team.

Wilie's big break came when the state crime lab reported that the specks on the flashlight lens were human blood type O, same as Mickey's but not Joe's. DNA testing did not exist in 1985. Wilie was suspicious, even though half the world's population has type O blood. When a crime lab chemist also found some tiny plastic particles on the flashlight lens and suspected that they had the same characteristics as the birdshot shells found at the crime scene, Wilie was convinced the flashlight had been used in the murder.

The Ranger had his man.

On October 23, eight days after the murder, Joe Bryan was at his mother's home in Elm Mott, watching television with her in the den, when Wilie unexpectedly arrived at the door. With him were the Clifton chief of police, Ron Brennand, and the Bosque County sheriff, Denny Proffitt. Joe was relieved and glad to see them, and hopeful they had good news about the investigation.

Instead, Joe Wilie said, "You're under arrest for your wife's murder."

At first Joe was unable to speak, then managed to ask, "On what evidence?"

Wilie had no response. Joe was handcuffed, placed in the rear seat of a patrol car, and driven to nearby Waco, where he was processed. He was then taken to the Bosque County jail in Meridian, where he was stripped naked and photographed. The police were looking for scratches and bruises, possibly to indicate a desperate last-minute fight by Mickey.

No such evidence was found.

—

The news of Joe's arrest was met with widespread disbelief. In fact, no one who knew Joe believed for a moment that he had killed Mickey, a woman he loved, cherished, and was thoroughly devoted to. Their colleagues at the school were incredulous and angry. Current and former students were vehement in their protests. Joe was known for his lack of anger and cool head in every situation. He had neither the temperament nor the motive to harm anyone, certainly not his wife.

It's not clear whether Ranger Wilie and his team felt a backlash after the arrest. They had rushed the investigation, found no witnesses and no credible clues, ignored a clear alibi, and were now preening for the press. Once again the heroic Ranger had ridden into town on a white horse and saved the people by arresting a cold-blooded killer.

Implementing their "indict first, investigate later" strategy, Wilie and his team busied themselves trying to prove the one element of the crime that begged for attention: motive. There was absolutely no evidence or even gossip about Joe and Mickey's marital problems. They had none. They were inseparable, got along with their relatives, had little money to bicker over, loved being together, and would rather spend time by themselves than with friends.

To cast doubt on the couple's closeness, the investigators decided that Joe was a homosexual. Since they believed he had homosexual tendencies, then, obviously, he had homicidal ones as well.

The smear was on. One of their more bizarre theories was that Mickey had somehow found out about Joe's sordid double life and was planning to confront him, then divorce him, and so on. There was not a shred of evidence anywhere to even suggest this, but that didn't matter. The case was completely devoid of any hint of a motive, so it was imperative that the cops create one.

Fueling the smear campaign was something Joe Wilie had found in the trunk of Joe Bryan's Mercury when he was searching for the flashlight. It was a Chippendales pin-up calendar with color photos of partially clad male dancers posing for each month. (Joe and Mickey had bought it, together, as a gag gift for a friend, then forgot about it and left it in the trunk.)

What further proof was needed?

—

After Joe was arrested and released on bond, the investigators fanned out through the community looking for proof that he was gay, and in the process did not hesitate to spread all manner of salacious rumors.

When Joe Wilie interviewed Susan Kleine, Mickey's close friend and teaching colleague, his first question stunned her: "Do you think Joe is effeminate?" Before she could answer, he followed up with "There are rumors that Joe is gay."

Susan was close to both Joe and Mickey and was adamant in her belief that he would never harm her. She knew them well, knew their friends and families well, and had never heard anyone say anything about Joe being gay. Not until it was mentioned by Joe Wilie.

She pushed back hard and said no, Joe was not, in her opinion, effeminate, and he was definitely not gay. And, no, she had never heard such a rumor until now. Kleine became rattled when Wilie kept asking similar questions about Joe's sexuality. She knew the truth, and she also knew how devastating the rumors could be for someone like Joe. She finally warned Wilie that he was on thin ice and should be careful with a person's reputation.

Wilie and his team were anything but careful. In dozens of interviews with friends and acquaintances, they repeatedly returned to the "gay" theme in Joe's life, though not one witness knew the first thing about it. The cops got even more creative and asked questions about "rumors" of Joe being involved with a male student, and Joe stealing away to New Orleans for weekends of debauchery in gay bars. The rumors, all created and fomented by the cops, were repeated, passed around, embellished, and took on a life of their own.

The investigators' notes contain such observations as "Homo tendencies?" and "He gay?" and "Queer?"

As the investigators dug through every aspect of Joe's private life, they obtained his phone records. It was one of those moments when thoughtful detectives would realize they were on the wrong trail. Not so with Wilie and his posse. Joe's phone calls in the month before the murder were to Mickey, his mother, his older brother, a cousin, a vitamin shop, a contact-lens store, and a hospital. There was not a single call that was even remotely suspicious.

Thoughtful detectives, though, were not in charge. The arrest had been made, they had their man, and now they were desperate to prove it.

—

Joe Bryan was a happily married straight male who had never been unfaithful to Mickey. Throughout their marriage they had enjoyed a close, intimate relationship. Like most marriages, the earlier years had seen more activity, especially when they were "working" hard to reproduce. When they learned Mickey could not get pregnant, they were deeply saddened, but they were only in their late twenties and much too young to give up on sex.

When the gay rumors finally made it to Joe at his mother's home in Elm Mott, it felt like just another rotten blow to an innocent man. What can they do next? he asked himself.

—

The people of Clifton were law-abiding folks who placed great trust in the authorities: the police, the prosecutors, the judges. A nasty rumor passed along by an average citizen may or may not have traveled far, but one uttered with the authority of a policeman, yet alone a Texas Ranger, carried much greater weight. It didn't take long for the rumors, thoroughly unfounded, to get repeated and passed around. As always with rumors, the more sensational they were, the faster they traveled.

As the smear campaign gained steam, Joe stayed away from Clifton.

The school put him on paid leave, and for the first time in many years his days did not center around his students and the school schedule. He missed them greatly, and he missed his friends, many of whom were slowly withdrawing.

Most of all, he missed his beloved Mickey, his wife and best friend.

Once a week he went home to Clifton to mow his yard. He was beginning to feel like a trespasser in his own town. His neighbors were still friendly, but others kept their distance. He often stopped by the cemetery, where he sat next to Mickey's grave and wept. Losing her was a raw, jagged hole in his life. Being accused of killing her made the pain unbearable.

His Christian faith had always sustained and guided him. He prayed more than ever and read his Bible, searching for help. He continued worshipping in his church and was strengthened by the closeness he felt with the other believers. That bond, though, was shattered one day when his pastor telephoned and, after a friendly chat, finally got around to the real purpose of the call. Several members of First Baptist Church had complained that they were uneasy with Joe's presence. Did he mind staying away until the trial was over? It was another painful slap at Joe and he withdrew even deeper into his own dark world.

Not long afterward, the school superintendent paid a visit and asked Joe to resign.

To make bad matters worse, Charlie Blue reappeared and again inserted himself into the proceedings by filing a lawsuit to protect Mickey's estate and keep Joe from spending their savings on legal fees. The judge agreed, and Joe had to borrow money from his siblings to pay his lawyers. Otis and Vera, Mickey's parents, cut off all communication with Joe.

—

Six months after the murder, the trial began in the Bosque County Courthouse in the town of Meridian, the county seat and even smaller than Clifton. Joe's lawyers had made the crucial decision not to request a change of venue. They reasoned that their client was well known and respected in his community, an accused man who deserved to be judged by his peers. The decision proved to be prudent when most of the prospective jurors raised their hands when asked if they either knew or had heard of Joe Bryan.

To his family and friends, he was a startling sight sitting at the defense table between his two lawyers. At times he appeared sad and confused, and at other times he appeared almost belligerent and combative because everyone knew the trial was a sham, he was innocent, and he just wanted to hurry things along and get the trial over with. Since the day of his arrest, it had never for a single moment occurred to Joe that he would be found guilty of murdering Mickey. At times he feared it might happen, trials being so unpredictable, but he knew the truth and was certain it would absolve him. He didn't belong in the courtroom, dammit, someone else did.

The case was prosecuted by Andy McMullen, the elected district attorney, who had little experience in murder. The evidence handed to him by Joe Wilie and his team was so lame, circumstantial, and riddled with gaping holes that a guilty verdict looked doubtful. McMullen, though, was not about to stand in the way of a Texas Ranger who claimed to have solved a high-profile murder.

McMullen's task was an uphill slog from the opening gavel. He had no direct proof, only circumstantial at best. There were no witnesses; no one saw or heard anything unusual the night Mickey was killed. To convict Joe of the murder, the State would have to convince the jurors to believe an incredible theory: (1) On the night of October 14, Joe and Mickey talked by phone around 9:15 and said good night; (2) Joe then sneaked out of his hotel room in Austin, 120 miles away, and drove two hours to his home in Clifton; (3) Joe made the drive in spite of a heavy thunderstorm, and in spite of a vision problem called corneal erosion, a condition that made it difficult for him to see at night; (4) Joe arrived home around midnight, parked his car in his driveway, then unlocked the door with his key and entered the kitchen; (5) Joe moved through the dark house while Mickey was asleep, found his .357 Magnum pistol, loaded it with buckshot, found the flashlight, then eased into their dark bedroom where he shot his wife four times; (6) while firing away, he was holding the flashlight in such a manner that Mickey's type O blood spattered, or backsplashed, onto Joe, the walls, the ceiling, and the flashlight itself; (7) Joe, covered in blood, bathed, changed into clean clothes and shoes, threw away the bloody ones, and left his home; (8) while making his getaway, he took the pistol, which was never found, and the flashlight, which he placed in the trunk of his car, evidently unaware that the back-spatter had also landed on it; (9) Joe also "stole" the wedding band he'd given to his wife, along with her watch and diamond ring; (10) having killed his wife, Joe drove back to Austin in the early morning of October 15, sneaked into his room without being seen, slept a few hours, then arrived promptly at 8:30 for a breakfast session with friends as if nothing had happened.

With great effort, much of this outlandish scenario could almost be explained. For example: Joe chose October 14 because he would be out of town and his alibi would be well documented; he made the four-hour round-trip drive with his vision greatly impaired but was determined to do so anyway; he knew the town would be fast asleep after midnight on a Tuesday so there was no need to hide his car; he entered his own home quietly because he had a key; perhaps he had pre-loaded his pistol and had it ready; instead of turning on the light in his bedroom and giving Mickey a chance to wake up and resist, he attacked in the dark so she would have no defense and never know who killed her; he knew the scene would be bloody so he had a change of clothes and shoes ready for his getaway. And so on.

Each detail could be debated back and forth. However, in a criminal trial a conviction must be reached beyond a reasonable doubt and cannot be based on what might have or could have happened. Solid proof is required, and in State v. Bryan the State had almost none of it to offer.

Missing also was a motive. During the trial, the State would be unable to produce even the slightest scintilla of evidence that Joe and Mickey were having marital problems. The opposite was true. After months of questioning their friends and families, the investigators had not dug up a single hint of conflict or a word of discontent.

As for the homosexual angle, it, too, had fizzled. Regardless of the innuendos, rumors, and loaded questions they had floated around the county, the investigators had found zero proof of bad behavior by Joe, either with men or women. They had tried to smear Joe's reputation, but the courtroom was packed with his friends and supporters, clear proof that he was admired, even beloved. About forty of his closest friends planned to testify on his behalf.

McMullen's opening statement to the jury was so lacking in conviction and ineffectual that it was almost a surrender, an admission that the State didn't have much of a case. Generally speaking, when prosecutors lack strong evidence they tend to grab the high moral ground, yell a lot, even quote Holy Scripture and Shakespeare, and divert the jury's attention from their weak case. McMullen did not do that. He did not present a theory of the case. He rambled on a bit, offered some platitudes, and thanked the jurors for their service.

The fireworks came next, from another prosecutor, an out-of-town lawyer named Garry Lewellen. When Charlie Blue became frustrated with the slow pace of the investigation, he brought in his own investigator. He was equally unimpressed with McMullen, so he hired his own prosecutor—Garry Lewellen. Texas law permitted the victim's family to hire a special prosecutor, but only as long as the district attorney kept control of the case.

Lewellen was rowdier and feistier than McMullen and barked enough to get the jury's attention. The State's case, though, soon lost whatever momentum he had given it. The jury was shown graphic photos of the crime scene, and diagrams of the bedroom and the house, all of which proved little. Two human hairs found in a cardboard box in the trunk of Joe's Mercury did not match his or Mickey's. Some fingerprints from the bedroom were Joe's, but then it was his bedroom. Some more were found on his flashlight. He had never denied owning it. An unidentified palm print taken from the bedroom was not Joe's and it could not be linked to Mickey because the comparison tests got screwed up. A chemist from the state crime lab testified that she'd examined photographs of the flashlight under her microscope and seen a fragment she believed could have been from the plastic shell casings found at the crime scene.

Remarkably, the flashlight was not present in the courtroom. It's not clear where it was kept at the time, but the record is clear that the State did not produce it for the jury to see. All the analysis of the lens of the flashlight was performed by examining photographs of the flashlight, and not the flashlight itself.

The first days of the trial dragged on with no damning evidence presented against Joe.

The most important piece of evidence also had the most potential to damage the State's case: the cigarette butt found on the kitchen floor. Since neither Joe nor Mickey smoked, it stood to reason that the killer had calmly had a smoke after, or even perhaps before, he committed his crime.

Regardless, the cigarette butt was a major problem for the prosecution. Someone left it there, and that someone was the killer.

But Joe Wilie was not deterred. He had a new story. He patiently explained to the jury that he himself had stepped on the cigarette butt when he was outside the house and had inadvertently tracked it into the kitchen, where it fell off the sole of his cowboy boot. How the Ranger knew he had stepped on it was not made clear. How he knew he had somehow deposited it moments later on the kitchen floor was never explained. So, the problem was solved. And Wilie even had a witness. A Clifton policeman named Kenneth Fields testified that he had actually seen the cigarette butt fall from Wilie's boot onto the kitchen floor. Of course, Fields did not mention this to anyone at the time, nor did he include it in his written report. Wilie's own twenty-five-page report makes no mention of the sticky cigarette butt.

On the fourth day of the trial, the State called Charlie Blue to the stand.

He and Lewellen, the prosecutor he was paying, went through a well-rehearsed back-and-forth to establish that Blue was the concerned older brother who just wanted to find justice for his sister. He told the jury his story about meeting Saunders, his private investigator, and driving around the county in Joe's Mercury, until they stopped beside the road to relieve themselves. When they opened the trunk, Blue saw the flashlight, noticed the red specks on the lens, and immediately said, "That looks like blood." Not surprisingly, Saunders agreed.

Again, the jurors did not have the benefit of looking at the flashlight. Instead, they were handed color photographs that barely showed some specks that were practically indistinguishable.

—

The State's case plodded on with little drama and no clear evidence of Joe's guilt. The most crucial testimony came from Joe Wilie as he was being cross-examined by Joe's lawyers about the absence of motive. He was asked, "You haven't come up with one motive at all, have you, for this man to kill this woman?"

Wilie replied, "She's worth three hundred thousand dollars to him dead, if you want to surmise a motive."

The statement was not only inflammatory and highly prejudicial, it was also untrue. The policy on Mickey's life paid roughly $150,000. When she died, she and Joe had about $35,000 in the bank and a modest home with a mortgage. To testify, under oath, that Joe's motive, indeed the only possible motive, was financial, was objectionable. To mention the life insurance should have been grounds for a mistrial.

Joe's lawyers jumped to their feet and objected loudly. The prosecutors yelled back. When things settled down, the judge allowed the testimony anyway.

After four days the State had produced nothing but weak evidence that was not only circumstantial but, for the most part, equivocal. The course of the trial changed dramatically on the fifth day, when Robert Thorman took the stand. As a newly certified expert in the field of bloodstain analysis, he would bring scientific certainty to an otherwise murky case.

As most expert witnesses do, Thorman began with a blustery narrative about his credentials and qualifications: his long career in law enforcement, even the military police, and his training in bloodstain analysis. The jury did not know that he had no scientific training in such analysis and that his sole training consisted of one forty-hour course in a Beaumont hotel four months earlier.

He then laid the groundwork for his expertise by describing the crime scene when he arrived on the evening of October 15. The jury had already seen plenty of the gory photographs and needed to see no more. Thorman said there was a "vast amount" of splattering and there would have been a "vast amount" of blood on the killer, whoever he was.

The flashlight was the crucial piece of evidence, and Thorman soon got around to it. Since it was not available, and no one could ever explain where the damned thing was, Thorman relied on some of the same photographs the jury had already seen. They did not reveal any recognizable blood; rather they showed a series of tiny specks, which, to the average eye would mean nothing. But to a highly trained expert like Thorman, there was an enormous amount of evidence in those specks. They were caused by blowback, or backsplash, or "back-spatter," as he preferred to call it, and, at least to him, they were proof that the victim's blood had reversed course from the angle of the wounds and traveled backward at a high rate of speed. Since some of the blood landed on the flashlight, it therefore stood to reason that the flashlight was at the crime scene.

Thorman went on to say that the absence of spatter on the handle of the flashlight indicated that someone was holding it at the time of the shooting.

This fit neatly into the State's scenario that Joe sneaked into his own home, did not turn on the lights for fear of waking the person he was about to murder, then entered his bedroom with the flashlight in one hand while firing his pistol with the other.

Using some of the scientific words he had just learned, and also throwing in the usual jargon, Thorman was certain the flashlight was a crucial part of the murder. After the shooting, Joe had hidden it in the trunk of his car, but only after neglecting to wipe off the blood. Since Mickey's blood was O-positive (like that of billions of others), then it was clear, at least to Thorman and the investigators, that Joe had killed his wife.

On cross-examination, Joe's lawyer asked Thorman how, in spite of the "vast amount" of blood that had back-spattered onto the killer, Joe's car, the Mercury, could have been so spotlessly clean when it was examined by the investigators. There was not a trace of blood anywhere. And, also, how did the killer manage to leave the crime scene without tracking or leaving a trace of Mickey's blood? The crime scene team found no bloody fingerprints, nor boot or shoe prints.

Here, Thorman began to improvise. He speculated that Joe bathed and changed clothes and shoes, and also found the time to thoroughly wipe down his car.

Thorman's alleged expertise was with bloodstain analysis, the parameters of which were set by the crime scene itself. He had a certificate to prove it. From where, then, did he gain the knowledge to predict what a killer might do after he left the crime scene? How could he possibly know, for a fact, that the killer bathed, changed clothes and shoes, and scrubbed his car to get rid of bloodstains?

It was all speculation. Thorman was reaching far beyond the scope of his field. That portion of his testimony was prejudicial and inadmissible, and should have been stricken from the record, with an admonishment to the jury to disregard it. Joe's lawyers objected loudly but the judge admitted the shaky testimony anyway.

Robert Thorman saved the State's case by grounding it in scientific certainty. Until he testified, the prosecution had floundered through a mishmash of hearsay, speculation, half-truths, and innuendo. At the last minute, though, a certified expert had placed the flashlight taken from the trunk of Joe's car and made it a vital part of Mickey's murder.

Thorman had turned the tide dramatically.

—

For five days Joe had sat at the defense table and looked on helplessly as the State tried to piece together an unconvincing case that, in the end, did not prove his guilt. How could it? So many times he wanted to stand up and scream, "I'm innocent! I didn't do it! You've got the wrong guy! The killer is still out there!"

He did not kill Mickey and he'd been confident a trial would prove it. But after five days of being accused by the respected authorities, even a Texas Ranger, he was afraid. His fear was caused by the faces and reactions of the jurors, who appeared skeptical at first, but, after hours of hearing the accusations against him, began glancing at Joe with suspicion. The expert testimony from Thorman seemed to get their attention.

Joe began to understand the presumption of guilt. It went something like this: In a murder like Mickey's, the community is shocked and wants immediate justice. The people want the murderer caught, locked up, and punished. When a suspect is arrested, the public is relieved and rushes to judgment—the suspect must be guilty, or at least involved, otherwise the police wouldn't arrest him. Once presumed to be guilty, the suspect is hauled into the courtroom where he faces the power of the State—the police and prosecutors—the very authorities the public is brainwashed into trusting. The jurors, average folk selected from the community, place much greater credence in the testimony of the authorities than in anything offered by the defendant, who, of course, is fighting for his life and will do or say anything to save his neck.

Joe realized he was presumed to be guilty. The trial was not fair. The field was not level.

He insisted on testifying for himself. He had done nothing wrong and certainly had no criminal record to worry about on cross-examination. He was unimpeachable and his lawyers agreed he could speak for himself. He began by denying everything the jury had just heard. He was in a hotel room 120 miles away when his wife was murdered. He did not kill her, had no reason to, no motive. To suggest otherwise was outrageous. He owned the flashlight but did not put it in the trunk of his car, nor could he remember how it got there.

He was emotional at times, especially when talking about Mickey, but he held himself together and survived the direct examination.

On cross-examination, Robert Lewellen attacked with an endless barrage of accusations that portrayed Joe as a liar. Joe held firm and insisted he had never left his hotel room that night. Time and again he said, "I don't know, I don't know. I've never understood any of this." As Lewellen hammered away, Joe broke into tears and kept saying, "I did not kill Mickey and I don't know who did."

Lewellen had the final word, and the last thing the jury heard was his loud and angry summation, ending with "Mickey didn't go to bed and leave the house unlocked that night. She locked the door, and a man came in with a key, and after all hell broke loose in that bedroom, he cleaned up, changed clothes, wiped up the lavatory, threw his clothes in the bag, walked out the front door. Then he went right back, walking in the front door of the Hyatt Hotel, whistling Dixie."

—

The jury deliberated for only four hours and found Joe guilty of murder. He was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. A week later, he was placed in the rear seat of a patrol car and driven 160 miles to the prison in Huntsville, home of the State's busy death chamber. The prison was built with high, redbrick walls and guard towers and looked like a medieval fortress. Joe's first glimpse of it was a frightening shock, but by then he was almost numb to another blow to the truth and his freedom. And, oddly enough, he was not frightened. He knew God would protect him.

In April 1986, Joe Bryan, age forty-six, entered the Texas prison system, where he would remain for the next thirty-four years.

—

Prison is a dreadful place even for those who deserve it. For an innocent person it is a continuation of an unimaginable nightmare. For Joe, it was the endgame, the final stop, the place he would never leave. Robbed of the person he loved, falsely accused by trigger-happy cops, wrongfully convicted by a corrupt system, and banished to a hellhole where he was supposed to die, he immediately fell into a state of dark, endless depression. In his first days and nights at Huntsville he was numb to his surroundings and withdrawn. He felt like a zombie, sleepwalking through the daily routines while trying to convince himself that through some miracle the nightmare would end. The loneliness was achingly painful. Predators attacked him twice but he fought them off and was left alone.

His cell was five feet by nine, a tight space for any man, but Joe had a cellmate, a "cellie," who took the bottom bunk by the rules of seniority. Avoiding physical contact required nimble feet and patience. When one needed to use the toilet, the other one disappeared.

Before long, Joe realized that a week had passed, then another. Then a month. He was slowly becoming institutionalized and moving through each day as he was told. Virtually every aspect of his life was dictated for him: waking up, eating meals, showering twice a week, working, exercising, visiting with family and his lawyers. In his sparse free time he played the piano in chapel services, taught other inmates seeking their GEDs, tutored officers taking college courses, and read at least two books a week.

His lawyers professed optimism for his chances on appeal, though they knew firsthand the harsh reputation of the Texas criminal appellate courts. Joe relived his case, reading and studying everything—the briefs filed by his lawyers, the court transcripts, the motions, and the rulings from the judge.

He met with his lawyers as often as they could make it to Huntsville. In their filings they argued strenuously that the State's case was insufficient, that Thorman's work lacked scientific integrity, and that there was simply no reasonable cause for accusing Joe, the husband, as the suspect.

Joe Wilie's cocky testimony caught the attention of the appellate court.

He was dead wrong when he suggested to the jury that Mickey was worth $300,000 to Joe if she was dead. The actual amount of her life policy was about half that, but such testimony was prejudicial, regardless of the amount.

Two years after the trial, Joe's conviction was overturned. He was ecstatic, and thought—for a moment—that the injustice might be coming to an end. However, the State moved quickly to indict him again and schedule a second trial.

It was a repeat of the first, with the same prosecutors and witnesses.

Robert Thorman was even more certain of his findings and once again ventured far away from his field of "expertise." The only significant difference was the lack of support from Joe's friends. Only a few volunteered to testify on his behalf. The rest had waved goodbye.

In July 1988, Joe was found guilty of murder and again sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.

—

As bloodstain analysis became more popular in the 1980s and '90s, it also became more controversial. Defense lawyers attacked it relentlessly as bogus science. Other experts, real scientists, studied it and found no shortage of flaws. Several notorious cases cast serious doubt on its reliability.

Perhaps its most egregious abuse was in the case of David Camm, an Indiana state trooper who spent thirteen years behind bars for a horrible crime he had nothing to do with. On a spring night in March 2000, Camm was playing basketball with some friends, and when the game was over he drove home. In his garage, he found a bloody scene that was indescribable—his wife and two children had been shot to death. In spite of a lack of motive, and in spite of the testimony of numerous alibi witnesses at the basketball game, the authorities believed Camm was the killer. They found eight specks of blood on his T-shirt, and they also found a couple of experts who testified that the specks were "high-velocity impact spatter." In other words, the T-shirt was present at the murders. Camm's lawyers produced experts who sharply disagreed and testified that the eight specks were "transfer stains," or bloodstains caused when Camm was frantically trying to render aid. He was put on trial, found guilty, appealed, won a reversal, was retried, found guilty again, appealed again, won another reversal, and was tried for the third time. At the end of his third trial, thirteen years after he was arrested, he was finally acquitted and walked free.

A burglar with a rap sheet was convicted when his DNA matched evidence from the crime scene.

More notorious wrongful convictions followed, and bloodstain analysis grew even more controversial, as did other types of shady forensics such as the analysis of hair, boot prints, arson, and bite marks. Criminal courtrooms in America were flooded with unscientific testimony offered by unqualified experts paid nice fees by prosecutors. With time, many of the wrongful convictions began to sour as defense lawyers and innocence advocates hammered away and DNA testing became more widespread and accurate.

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued an exhaustive report with seismic implications in the field of criminal law. In response to a tidal wave of complaints from defense lawyers, legal scholars, and forensic scientists, and also in response to the growing number of sensational DNA exonerations of innocent men and women, the NAS went to work and put the forensic disciplines under the microscope. What it found was unsettling.

Much of what passed for expert testimony was highly speculative and not grounded in scientific research. Regarding bloodstain analysis, the report issued a number of critical warnings and ended with: "The uncertainties associated with bloodstain-pattern analysis are enormous."

—

Joe's appellate lawyers, Walter Reaves and Jessica Freud, took his case to federal court with a writ of habeas corpus. To be successful, they would have to present new evidence of his innocence. They convinced the court to allow DNA testing of the cigarette butt and flashlight lens. Both proved futile—no DNA profile could be obtained from either. However, one test revealed a startling conclusion: There was no proof that the blood on the lens was actually blood!

In 2017, in a hearing to determine if Joe should be given a new trial, his lawyers stunned the courtroom with an affidavit from Robert Thorman, since retired. Thorman wrote: "My conclusions were wrong. Some of the techniques and methodology were incorrect. Therefore, some of my testimony was not correct." But, he concluded, "in no way did I lie in my report or testimony, as I was doing what I thought was correct as a result of my training at the time."

During the same hearing, a DNA analyst from the Texas crime lab testified that he'd tested six tiny stains on the flashlight lens. Five were negative for the presence of blood. The sixth was positive, but it could not be determined whose blood it was. DNA samples were taken from the handle of the flashlight. Joe and Mickey were both excluded.

Walter Reaves and Jessica Freud destroyed the State's case against Joe.

Nonetheless, his request for a new trial was denied.

As were his requests for parole. In spite of his near-perfect record in prison—no misconduct, no reprimands, nothing but high marks from his guards, bosses, and fellow inmates—Joe was denied parole seven times.

By March 2021, Joe had developed congestive heart disease and was in failing health. Plus, the Covid epidemic had prison authorities on edge. The parole board, for reasons it never explained, reversed itself and set Joe free.

He was welcomed by his family and went to live with his older brother in Houston.

—

Who killed Mickey Bryan? Because the investigation was so thoroughly botched, the truth will never be known. Once the investigators decided Joe was gay and therefore capable of murder and therefore willing to kill his wife to keep her quiet, and also to collect her life insurance, they arrested him a week after the murder. At that point, gripped by a severe case of tunnel vision, they abruptly stopped looking for other suspects. They had their man.

Instead of following several suspicious leads, they poked around for any trace of Joe's sordid secret life. They found nothing. The real killer remained free.

If they had bothered to look closer, they might have found the killer in their midst. Strong evidence pointed to a rogue cop named Dennis Dunlap, a Clifton city policeman.

Judy Whitley was the seventeen-year-old who was raped and murdered four months before Mickey was killed. Her nude and bound body was found less than a mile from the Bryans' home. Joe Wilie was also in charge of that investigation, which remained open. The pressure from the first murder could have motivated Wilie to act quickly to "solve" the second one.

Dennis Dunlap was a drifter who worked for several small-town police departments and had trouble keeping a job. He had a history of violence against women and was known to harass and stalk them while on duty. He was not a homicide detective and did not investigate the Whitley murder, but he surprised his colleagues by knowing so much about the case, even to the point of describing how the victim suffocated. He was briefly considered a suspect, but when he abruptly resigned and left town the investigators lost interest in him. The evidence in the case was stored in a police locker, and it, too, disappeared. He was known to return to Clifton periodically.

Joe Bryan has always suspected that the Clifton police told Dunlap to leave town to prevent an embarrassment. Once he was gone, he was no longer investigated.

In 1996, Dunlap was working as a janitor in the town of Rosenberg, Texas. His girlfriend called 911, and when the police arrived they found him in the garage hanging with a cord around his neck. He did not leave a suicide note, but shortly before he died he admitted to his girlfriend that he had killed Judy Whitley. He had bragged to his ex-wife, not his girlfriend, that he'd had an affair with Mickey and was with her the night she was murdered.

When the police went through Dunlap's personal items, they found letters and newspaper clippings that led them back to the murders in Clifton. A new police chief there reviewed the Whitley case and interviewed Dunlap's former associates. They recalled his intimate knowledge of the most gruesome aspects of the rape and murder. In June 1999, fourteen years after the murder, the Clifton police declared the crime solved. The headline in the town's newspaper declared: Dunlap Officially Named Murderer of Whitley Teen.

There would be no justice for Mickey Bryan, nor for her husband. The police have not reopened the case because Joe's conviction still stands.

—

May 1, 2024. Joe lives with his older brother in Houston and is still on parole. To visit Clifton and Bosque County, he must obtain written approval from his parole officer. He is free to travel anywhere in the state except Bosque County. Approval is granted, and Joe has the paperwork in his car.

He has not visited Mickey's grave in thirty-five years. It is in an old cemetery in a remote part of the county, near the land her family has owned for decades. The cemetery is neglected, poorly maintained, and as he steps through weeds and around old gravestones, he mumbles to himself, "Mickey would not approve of this."

He finds her grave, steps closer, then stops and begins weeping as the memories return. The feelings of loss are overwhelming: the loss of his true love and best friend, the loss of all those years in prison, the loss of a career he thoroughly enjoyed, the loss of friendships.

But he refused to lose his Christian faith. He still prays and reads Scripture every day, same as in prison. Always the teacher, he leads Bible study groups, same as in prison. He will even play the piano for the choir, if asked, same as in prison. He survived hell behind bars because of the strength he found in his faith. God protected him, as he knew He would.

And Joe has long since forgiven those responsible for his persecution. He can never forget people like Joe Wilie, Ron Brennand, and Robert Thorman, but he has forgiven them.

Staring at Mickey's name on the gravestone, he wipes his eyes and shakes his head and softly asks the same questions he has lived with for almost forty years: "Who in the world would want to hurt Mickey? And why?"