By reason of insanity

85

After a recess, Dr. Edward Chow took the stand, and Catherine's emotional roller coaster took another plunge. The small man was precise, professional, and well credentialed. Catherine remembered trying hard to dislike him during her two sessions with the psychiatrist. His disarming manner did not make it easy. As he testified now, she could sense the jury bonding with him while they learned about the intricacies of dissociative identity disorder.

It was, Chow testified, hotly debated whether DID even existed as a psychological disorder. A substantial school of thought held that DID patients either faked their alternate personalities or simply responded to suggestive counseling from their psychiatrists. For the purposes of this case, the psychiatrist said, it didn't really matter. Because even if there was such a thing as DID, Catherine O'Rourke was clearly not suffering from it.

Chow repeated much of the theme of the prosecution's case-that the crime was too well planned and too carefully covered up for it to be the spontaneous work of an alternate personality-but he buttressed the theory by lending his own considerable authority to the argument and cloaking it in official-sounding words.

"Catherine O'Rourke evinced consciousness of guilt," Chow testified, "by throwing out her computer before the authorities could execute their search warrant. In addition, a schizoaffective disorder almost always has a precipitate cause that triggers the psychotic break or, in the case of DID, the manifestation of another personality. After meeting with the defendant for several hours and after reviewing all the known facts of this case, I can point to no precipitate cause that might have occurred just before the killing of Paul Donaldson or any of the other victims."

The only thing that stopped Chow from completely dismantling the defense's case on Thursday afternoon was the clock. When the judge banged her gavel to call it a day, Chow seemed genuinely disappointed. He was the only one in the courtroom still looking fresh, his charcoal gray suit hardly wrinkled. To Catherine it seemed like he had so much more to say, more nails he wanted to drive into the coffin.

The next morning, Chow wasted no time continuing the assault. He shifted gears to what he termed "the underlying cause of the alleged dissociative identities." In Chow's opinion, the "alleged rape" during college was insufficient to create a psychotic break that could lead to multiple personalities, especially personalities that didn't manifest themselves until eight years later. DID was almost always caused by chronic abuse during childhood, a time in life when personality integration was occurring and could be stunted. DID caused by a single rape during someone's early adult years, or even multiple episodes of rape in a single night, would be unprecedented.

Not surprisingly, Chow had a few opinions about Catherine's jailhouse behavior as well. Catherine had shown the aggressive side of her core personality when she bludgeoned her cellmate, an event that Chow accentuated with some show-and-tell pictures of Holly's face. Plus, Catherine had pretty much gone berserk when she saw Kenny Towns on television. "The defendant claims to remember both of those incidents," Chow testified. "So they certainly can't be blamed on this mythical 'Avenger of Blood.'"

Gates paused and made a big show of checking his notes. "One final question: based on your assessment of Ms. O'Rourke, your review of the evidence, and your training and background, do you have an opinion as to why she would kill a man she didn't even know?"

Catherine expected Quinn to object but her defender just nonchalantly scribbled some notes.

"I do. It's my opinion that this whole Avenger of Blood persona and the preying on alleged rapists and their attorneys was an elaborate attempt by Ms. O'Rourke to deflect blame so that she wouldn't be a suspect when she committed her ultimate crime."

"Her ultimate crime, doctor?"

"I believe that Ms. O'Rourke fully intended to kill Kenneth Towns."