Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

The Charles Turner Case by Richard Deming

I said to the blonde, “Just when were you attacked, Miss Haliburton, and what was the man’s name?”

I won’t say I had completely forgotten the Charles Turner case when I was reminded of it by something George Novy told me. Novy’s information concerned the strip act a woman who lived in the apartment house across the areaway from his put on for his benefit each night. No district attorney is likely to forget the case which started him up the political ladder. But that case was five years in the past, and I doubt that I’d thought of it in three.

“You better be careful,” I advised Novy with a smile. “I tried a case once where the defendant started out by peeping in a neighbor woman’s window. He got twenty-five years to life.”

George Novy looked at me in astonishment. He was just out of law school and brand new to the district attorney’s office. “Twenty-five to life just for peeping?” he asked.

“I said he started by peeping. The peeping overexcited him, and he ended up with rape.”

My newest assistant grinned. “This wouldn’t be rape. This gal knows I’m watching, and deliberately puts on a show. I think I’ll accept the invitation one of these nights.”

“Charlie Turner claimed his peep-show actress knew he was watching too. He still got twenty-five to life.”

“Charlie Turner?” Novy said. “I remember that case. I was a freshman in law school then. You did handle that prosecution, didn’t you?”

“It was the case that made me,” I said. “If it wasn’t for Charlie Turner, I’d still probably be an assistant D.A. Frank Garby would probably be district attorney instead of me, and I certainly wouldn’t be running for the senate.”

“Aren’t you being a little modest, chief?” Novy asked.

I shook my head. “Public life is just as speculative a profession as acting. You need the one big break in both. In acting, it may be getting called to take over for a sick star on the night a movie talent scout is in the audience. For a public prosecutor with political ambitions, the big break is almost always a highly-publicized criminal case. Mine was Charles Turner.”

George Novy cocked a dubious eyebrow.

“Just consider,” I said. “Before the Turner case I was just an unknown assistant district attorney like you, the junior of eight in Saint Francis County. Nine hundred and ninety-nine voters out of a thousand had never heard of me. By the time the case was over, there wasn’t a person in the state who didn’t know who I was. Which made it almost mandatory for the party to by-pass the other seven assistants plus Frank Garby, who even then was first assistant D.A., when it came time to pick a new district attorney candidate because old Harry Doud wanted to retire.”

“You may have something there,” Novy said reflectively. “Even after five years, you see, I remembered you tried that case. And I’ve only actually known you three months. Next time a juicy rape case comes up, how about throwing it my way? I’ve got political ambitions too.”

“You keep peeping in that woman’s window, and you may end up the defendant in a rape case instead of the prosecutor.”

“It would almost be worth it,” Novy said with a faraway look in his eyes. “She’s not as young as she could be, but what a body she’s got! You ought to drop over some evening and see the show.” He went off into a detailed anatomical description of his exhibitionistic neighbor, but I wasn’t listening. My thoughts had drifted back five years to the case which gave me my big break.

It wasn’t just political ambition which made me build a relatively minor rape case into a sensational trial. If it had been, District Attorney Harry Doud would have thrown on the brakes. I was sincerely crusading for the protection of all womanhood against morals offenders, and the crusade just happened to catch public interest.

It caught public interest because the time was ripe. A number of brutal and unsolved rapes by a teen-age gang which was terrorizing the east end of town had made the whole city rape conscious. The police and the D.A.’s office were fretting under increasing editorial demands that “something be done.” So both officialdom and the general public were ready and eager for somebody like Charles Turner to come along and be made an example of.

My choice as prosecutor was pure luck. I happened to be the only assistant in the office when the call about Turner’s arrest came in. Harry Doud sent me over to make the preliminary investigation merely because I was available, later kept me on the case, I think, because my crusading fire caught him in the same way it eventually caught the public. If any of the other assistants had been around, Saint Francis would probably have a different district attorney today.

When the phone rang, I picked it up and said, “District attorney’s office. Wilde speaking.”

“Lieutenant Gordon, Johnnie,” said a husky voice. “We got a rape case down here for you.”

“Oh?” I asked. “One of that teen-age gang, I hope.”

“Naw,” the lieutenant said. “This guy’s an adult. Forced his way into a neighbor woman’s bedroom.”

“Okay,” I told him. “Somebody’ll be over.”

When I went into the boss’s office to tell him, Harry Doud asked the same question I had. “One of that teen-age gang, finally?”

I shook my head. “An adult who jumped one of his neighbors in her own home.”

The boss promptly lost interest. “Well, run over to the headquarters and see what they’ve got,” he said. “If you run into the chief, ask him when the hell he’s going to catch one of those teen-agers.”

At headquarters I found Lieutenant Gordon in his office with two women. One, who I assumed must be the rape victim, was a striking blonde of about nineteen with delicate, sensitive features and a build which was almost an open invitation to criminal assault. The other was about forty, an attractive, full-bosomed woman who was a mature replica of the younger. Even before introductions, it was obvious they were mother and daughter.

“This is Assistant District Attorney John Wilde,” the lieutenant told the two women. He introduced the older woman as Mrs. Haliburton, and the young blonde as her daughter Eleanor, then added, “They’re the victim and the witness in the case I phoned you about.”

I said to the blonde, “Just when were you attacked, Miss Haliburton, and what was the man’s name?”

Gordon said, “You’ve got your signals crossed, Johnnie. Mrs. Haliburton was the victim.”

I looked at the older woman in surprise, and she blushed.

Gordon said, “The culprit’s a guy named Charles Turner.”

My surprise turned to astonishment. “Not Congressman Charles Turner?”

Now Lieutenant Gordon looked surprised. “No, of course not. Turner’s in Washington, and anyway this guy isn’t more than twenty-five.” A thoughtful expression grew on his face. “The name didn’t register until you mentioned it. I didn’t ask him whether or not he’s related to the congressman.”

Mrs. Haliburton said in a quiet voice. “He’s Congressman Turner’s son.”

No one said anything for a few moments. The woman’s statement had suddenly changed a routine rape investigation into a delicate political problem. Theoretically everyone is equal under the law, but in practice you handle people backed by political influence with a great deal more care than you handle the average citizen. Since Congressman Turner was of the opposition party, I knew that even more care than usual would be necessary in this case, for the slightest misstep in investigation or prosecution could bring the charge that we were framing his son in order to embarrass the congressman politically.

Presently I said, “I didn’t know Turner had a son.”

“He’s been away at school,” Mrs. Haliburton said, pretty calmly I thought, for a woman who’d recently been attacked. “He’s just graduated in June, and has only lived here in town a few weeks.”

I said, “It sounds as though you know him pretty well.”

“Only as a neighbor. He lives in the same apartment building we do, directly across the court from us. I have some tulips planted in the courtyard, and a couple of times he’s wandered out while I was tending them. We had a little neighborly conversation, little more than an exchange of introductions and comments on the weather. But I considered him a bare acquaintance.”

“Tell me what happened today,” I said.

The woman glanced at her daughter and flushed slightly, then said in a resolute voice, “Mr. Turner rang my hall bell at about eleven-thirty this morning. I had just stepped from a bath, so I answered the door in my robe. He said, ‘Hi. May I come in?’ I was a little surprised, because he’d never called before, but I assumed he had some legitimate reason for wanting to talk to me. It never even occurred to me it mightn’t be safe to let him in.”

“So you invited him in? He didn’t have to force his way?”

“Oh no. I told him to wait in the front room while I dressed. I went into the bedroom and had just slipped off my robe when...” She paused and fixed her eyes on the floor. With an effort she went on, “I was stark naked when he suddenly came into the bedroom. He had taken off all his clothes in the front room and was naked too. He grabbed me before I could even let out a gasp of surprise.”

“Had you closed the bedroom door?” I asked.

She blushed and glanced at her daughter again. “Not completely,” she said in a reluctant tone. “I left it ajar, but it was pushed to enough so that I couldn’t be seen from the front room. I left it ajar in case he tired of waiting and decided to tell me his business while I dressed. We could have carried on conversation easily enough, as the bedroom gives right off the front room.”

“I see,” I said. “So he pushed open the door and grabbed you. Did you fight him?”

“I tried. But he’s an awfully powerful young man. Wait till you see him. Besides, I was nearly out of my wits from fright.”

“Did you scream?”

She shook her head. “He held his hand over my mouth every time I tried.” She paused, looked at her daughter and said in a low, distressed voice, “Now that it’s over, I can think of all sorts of things I might have done. Bitten his palm, for example, or rammed my knee into his groin. But I was so paralyzed by fear, I just couldn’t think. I finally just gave up.”

I said, “Now please don’t let my next question upset you, but it’s one I have to have answered. It’s of extreme importance, because it makes all the difference between the charge of attempted rape and actual rape. Did he succeed in his attack?”

“Yes,” she said nearly inaudibly. “Eleanor came in before he could...”

When her voice trailed off, I looked at the blonde daughter. “You actually witnessed the act?” I asked.

She nodded with a mixture of distaste and anger. “It was just luck that I came home. Ordinarily I lunch downtown. But I had a headache and the boss let me take off a little early for lunch so I could run home for some headache tablets I had there. I’m a stenographer for Ward and Thomas.”

“I see. So you came home unexpectedly. Just what did you see?”

“The first thing I saw was a man’s clothes thrown all over the sofa. Then I saw the bedroom door standing wide open and heard Mother groan. I rushed into the bedroom, saw what was happening, and started to beat on the man’s back with my fists. He rolled off the bed, and Mother began to scream hysterically. I started to scratch the man’s face, but he gave me a push that knocked me down. Then he ran into the front room. I guess he must have dressed and rushed out, but I didn’t go to see what he was doing. I was too busy trying to comfort Mother, who was sobbing and trying to tell me what had happened, both at the same time. Mr. Turner was gone when I finally looked in the front room. Then I phoned the police.”

I turned back to Mrs. Haliburton. “You understand that there’s no way to keep your identity a secret when we prosecute this man. The unfortunate thing about a rape case is that the victim has to suffer unwelcome publicity along with the culprit. Unless she’s a minor, which you’re not.”

The woman looked upset. She glanced at the blonde Eleanor, who said, “Are you suggesting that we don’t press charges against this beast just to avoid publicity?”

“No,” I told her. “Forcible rape is a felony, and you don’t have that choice, once you’ve reported the crime. I’m merely explaining what you’re in for. We’ll try to keep the unpleasantness to a minimum, but your friends and acquaintances are all going to read about the rape in the newspapers. And no doubt the tabloids will carry your picture also.”

I looked at the mother again. “Incidentally, does your husband know what happened yet?”

“I’m a widow,” she said.

“We have no close relatives,” Eleanor said. “We’ll stand the publicity. We want this animal jailed so he can’t harm other women.”

“Fine,” I said. “With the co-operation of both of you, we ought to be able to get him jailed fast. You can go home now. Someone from the district attorney’s office will get in touch with you as soon as a prosecutor is assigned to the case and the prosecution strategy is worked out. I’m just making the preliminary investigation, you understand, and probably won’t try the case.”

“Will there necessarily be a trial?” Mrs. Haliburton asked. “If he agrees to plead guilty, won’t he just be sentenced?”

“He can’t plead guilty to rape in this state,” I told her. “The maximum sentence is death, and the law requires a mandatory not-guilty plea for capital crimes. There has to be a trial whether Turner wants one or not.”

I turned to Lieutenant Gordon. “Let’s take a look at the prisoner now.”

The lieutenant had Charles Turner brought to the interrogation room, and we questioned him there. He was a powerfully-built man of about twenty-five with a face which would have been handsome if it hadn’t worn such a sullen expression. I disliked him the instant I saw him, not just because he was a rapist, but because he looked like the wise-guy type.

But because he was the son of a congressman, I adopted a pleasant tone. “You seem to be in a little jam, Turner.”

“I want a lawyer before I say a word,” he said belligerently. “I’ve a right to legal advice.”

“You’ve a right to legal advice when you’re accused of a crime,” I said. “So far you’re only booked for investigation. We first have to establish that a crime’s been committed. This is a preliminary investigation, not an official interrogation. There’s no stenographer present, and you won’t be asked to sign a statement. I just want to know what happened.”

He looked at me sullenly. “You can’t establish that any crime was committed. I didn’t rape that woman.”

“No? What’s your story?”

“She asked for it. I’ll admit the daughter walked in and saw it all. But it wasn’t rape. It was that woman’s doing as much as mine. More even.”

When I merely waited for him to go on, he said indignantly, “She’d been walking around in the nude over there in her apartment for days, trying to tease me into coming over. What the hell did she expect?”

“You’d been spying on her from your own apartment?”

“Spying? Listen, it didn’t take any spying. Their front windows are right across from mine, see, with a forty-foot-wide courtyard in between. I can see into their apartment and they can see into mine, when the shades are up. She knew I was watching her. She was putting on an act.”

“What kind of act?”

He ran fingers through his hair. “A tease act. I don’t have a job yet, see. I just graduated from college in June, and I’ve been taking a little vacation before settling down to work. I’ve been going out a lot nights and sleeping late. I get up about eleven, and every day I glance across the way. And every day, timing it to about the time she figures I get up, Mrs. Haliburton prances into her front room bare naked and starts calisthenics. Only she’s not interested in the exercise. She just wants to give me an eyefull.”

I asked, “How do you know?”

“Because of the way she does it. Never fully looking my way, but standing so she can see me from the corner of her eye. You think I can’t tell when a woman is deliberately putting on a show?”

“You’re an expert?” I asked. “You’ve had lots of experience watching naked women through windows?”

He turned red. “No I haven’t had lots of experience. But you can tell when a woman knows somebody is watching her. And Mrs. Haliburton knew I was watching her.”

“How do you tell?” I asked. “What’s your basis of comparison?”

“The young daughter’s my basis of comparison!” he suddenly bawled at me. “She doesn’t pose like a strip artist when she’s bare. She just pops out of the bedroom and into the bathroom as fast as she can.”

Then he looked dismayed at his own admission. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t playing Peeping Tom. I just happened to be looking that way once when I saw the daughter. It was pure accident, not like the old lady’s peep show. I’ll admit I watch that on purpose, but she knows I’m watching.”

“I’ll bet,” I said. “So that’s why you went over this morning, is it? You thought you’d be welcome.”

“I was welcome. She didn’t yell rape until the daughter caught us. She can’t say she did.”

“But she does say she did,” I told him pleasantly. “She says it was rape. You claim it was just seduction?”

“Well, she invited me in.”

“She admits that,” I said. “Why shouldn’t she have? She knew you were a fellow tenant. It was a normal action. You figure that inviting you in was an invitation to seduction?”

“The way she said it, yes.” In a falsetto voice he mimicked, “Why, hello. Come in. You’ll have to wait until I get something on. I’m completely bare under this robe.”

“She said it like that, or you imagined it like that? Those were her exact words and tone?”

“Well, maybe not exact. But they boiled down to that.”

I said, “Wasn’t it your inflamed imagination that boiled them down to that? Didn’t she actually just invite you in, tell you to wait while she dressed, and go into the bedroom?”

“No, it wasn’t my inflamed imagination!” he yelled. “I know an invitation when I hear it. Sure she told me to wait while she dressed, but what she meant was wait until she shed her robe and then come get her.”

“You read minds, do you?” I asked.

“I don’t have to read minds to tell a woman on the make!” he shouted. “Listen, she planted me on the sofa, then went in the bedroom and left the door open a good foot. I couldn’t see through that opening, because she was beyond the door, but it left a crack where the door was hinged. From the sofa I could see right through it. Why’d she put me on the sofa and then fix the door like that, if she didn’t want to give me a peep show?”

“I couldn’t say,” I told him. “Did you get a peep show?”

“Sure I did. She pulled off her robe and posed around in front of the mirror, pretending to fix her hair. And all the time she knew I was watching.”

“So you took this as the final invitation?”

“Wouldn’t you?” he demanded.

“I’ve never been in a similar situation. So you accepted this supposed invitation by stripping yourself and entering the bedroom, did you?”

“Listen, I knew what she wanted.”

“Sure you did. She accepted you eagerly, I suppose?”

A look of doubt crossed his face. “Oh, she looked surprised and tried to act indignant. But that was just part of the game. She didn’t struggle enough even to make it convincing.”

“She did struggle some then?”

“Listen,” he said. “Every woman struggles a little. It’s to convince herself she’s not a tramp. I’m telling you the truth. Mrs. Haliburton lured me over there by putting on her naked acts; she deliberately put on another to get me in the bedroom, and she gave in because she wanted to. She yelled rape just to save face in front of her daughter. If the daughter hadn’t walked in, I wouldn’t be down here.”

I said to Lieutenant Gordon. “I think I have enough. Let him phone a lawyer, then send him back to his cell.”

When I got back to the office and went in to report to the old man, I was already beginning to feel the fire of a crusade building in me to the point of eruption.

I said to Harry Doud, “If Charles Turner Senior’s political influence gets his son out of this, I’m getting out of the legal profession. Any rapist is a low enough animal, but this one takes the prize. To save his own hide, he’s willing to brand his accuser a tramp. This Mrs. Haliburton is as respectable-looking a woman as you’d find anywhere. He can’t possibly win with his cockeyed defense, but it’ll be printed in the newspapers if he springs it. And plenty of readers who don’t know the full courtroom testimony will believe it.”

“No defense attorney with any brains will let him use the story,” Doud said. “The minute he admits she struggled, he’s lost.”

“He’ll cut that part after a little legal advice,” I said impatiently. “He has to use the story. The daughter caught them right in the act, so he can’t claim less than seduction. His only hope is to establish in the jury’s mind that she was willing.”

Doud scratched an ear. “You’re probably right,” he said finally. “I don’t suppose Turner has any previous record, does he?”

“Not here. Lieutenant Gordon’s checking with his college town. I’d like to see this fellow made an example of. A good stiff sentence for a person with Turner’s influence would be better protection for other women than all the police patrols you could set up. It would prove we don’t compromise with rapists, no matter who they are. These teen-age kids might think twice before pulling another attack if they knew they were flirting with the electric chair.”

“You’re pretty worked up about this, aren’t you?” the district attorney asked.

“You’re damned right I am. In my book a rapist is one step below a dope peddler.”

He studied me estimatingly for a long time, finally asked, “Want to handle the prosecution?”

I was a little taken aback. Already I’d begun to visualize it as a big case, perhaps one big enough to deserve the personal attention of the D.A. himself. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might get it.

“Why, sure,” I said. “If you want me to.”

“The experience will do you good,” he said. “And maybe your enthusiasm will do this office some good.”

He cautioned me about the political aspects of the case, which I’d already thought of, told me to call on him for all the help I needed, and wished me luck.

The next morning Lieutenant Gordon phoned that his check with Turner’s college town had hit pay dirt. Two years previously Charles Turner had been convicted of attempted rape on a girl he’d picked up in a bar. His father’s influence had gotten him off with a fine and suspended sentence, but the incident could possibly cost him his life now. Once I managed to implant in the jury’s mind that Mrs. Haliburton wasn’t the first woman Turner had tried his cave-man technique on, it wasn’t likely to accept Turner’s version of events as against that given by the two women witnesses. My case against Turner looked airtight.

The rest of the case is history. You’ll recall from news stories that Charles Turner’s father engaged the eminent criminal lawyer, Gerald Winters, to defend his son. And that the defense was approximately what I’d guessed it would be, except that Gerald Winters dropped all reference to the nude calisthenics act Turner had described to me. Apparently the defense attorney realized this was more likely to make the defendant look like a peeping Tom than convince the jury the plaintiff was trying to tantalize him into action. Winters blocked my efforts to bring it in by having Turner blandly pretend he didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked him under oath if he’d ever seen Mrs. Haliburton nude prior to the day in question.

Instead, Gerald Winters attempted to establish that Mrs. Haliburton had been seductively invitational on the several occasions she and the defendant had met in the courtyard. Turner testified that she had; Mrs. Haliburton testified that she hadn’t. So it was left to the jury to decide which was lying.

The prosecution and defense versions of what happened after Turner entered the bedroom differed more radically than their versions of what happened before he entered. The defense claimed there had been no resistance of any sort; I put Mrs. Haliburton on the stand and had her tell that she had resisted with every force at her command, but was finally forced to submit.

It was a rather telling blow for the prosecution when we got across to the jury that Charles Turner weighed two hundred and fifteen pounds, Mrs. Haliburton one hundred and twenty.

The prominence of the defendant made it a page-one case, but we carefully avoided giving the defense any ammunition with which to claim Turner was being railroaded in order to embarrass his father politically. We even went so far as not to try to get a signed statement from Turner, so that the defense couldn’t claim undue duress. We based our case entirely on the testimony of Mrs. Haliburton and her daughter.

Because I made a crusade of the case, and the newspapers enthusiastically backed the crusade, I got considerable personal publicity. As a young and unknown prosecutor facing one of the greatest criminal lawyers in the country, I was likened to David fighting Goliath. Over and over the papers eulogized my fiery spirit and oratorical eloquence.

I would like to say that my eloquence won the case for the prosecution. But I have to admit that if Charles Turner had been charged with any crime other than rape, and I’m including murder, the jury might have given him the benefit of the doubt. For there was the reasonable doubt that the plaintiff had cried rape merely to save her daughter’s opinion of her. The daughter’s testimony established beyond question that at least seduction had taken place, and furthermore the defense admitted it. But establishing forcible rape hinged solely on the word of the victim. And the jury was as obligated to consider Turner’s version of events as it was to consider Mrs. Haliburton’s.

The psychology in rape cases differs from that in all other crimes, however. The constitutional guarantee that the accused is innocent until proved guilty is exactly reversed. No one admits it, but the jury, the press, the general public, and often even the court, automatically regards an accused rapist as guilty until proved innocent. In effect he is told: let the burden of proof of your innocence rest on you.

In all other cases, of course, the burden of proof rests on the prosecution.

Probably the explanation is the general acceptance that no woman would undergo the public shame of admitting she’d been raped unless she had. She might lie about being cheated or robbed, but the average person can’t conceive of her lying about being raped. So despite the constitutional guarantee, in rape cases the burden of proof lies on the accused.

Charles Turner failed to prove his innocence. He was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-five years to life.

I never had any qualms of conscience about the verdict whenever I thought of it later. I was convinced Turner was guilty and got what he deserved. My sole emotion on the gradually decreasing occasions I thought of young Turner in subsequent years was gratification that I had been lucky enough to draw the case. For it had made me politically. The turning point of my career.

George Novy’s voice penetrated my thoughts. Not noticing my preoccupation, he was still talking about his female neighbor.

“She’s probably all of forty-five,” he said. “But she still has the body of a teen-ager. She lives alone too.”

“No husband?” I asked idly.

“She’s a widow. I talked to the guy who lives below her, and he says she has a daughter, but the daughter’s married and lives with her husband.”

A vague suspicion tugged at my mind, one involving an impossible coincidence.

“You know this woman’s name?” I asked.

“Sure. I got that from her downstairs neighbor, too. It’s Mrs. Haliburton.”

I don’t think I changed expression, but internally I went through a series of emotional spasms. It is a terrible shock to suddenly have thrust upon you the knowledge that you’ve condemned an innocent man to half a lifetime in prison.

Instantly I thought of a pardon, and how I might go about obtaining the proof necessary to request one. After remaining quiet for five years, it seemed unlikely that merely asking the woman to undo her wrong by confessing she had invited seduction from Turner would get me anywhere.

Then I realized I had the means to force a confession right at hand. I could induce George Novy to accept the woman’s overt invitation, arrange for witnesses and catch her red-handed in a situation exactly like the one which had sent Charles Turner to prison.

Then a cautioning thought intruded. I couldn’t free Turner from prison without exposing my own grievous error. Ordinarily such a thing wouldn’t have any serious repercussions, probably would only merit bare mention in the news. But at the present moment it would be political suicide.

For, you see, my opponent in the coming senatorial race was Congressman Charles Turner Senior. And the opposition would make political capital of the fact that, five years previously, I had railroaded his son into prison. At the very least Congressman Turner would draw widespread sympathy.

Sympathy means votes. There was no doubt in my mind that obtaining a pardon for Charles Turner would mean handing the senate seat to my opponent.

It was a problem I would have to postpone until I could give it serious thought, I decided.

George Novy said, “Incidentally, what was the name of that woman in the Turner case?”

The question killed all opportunity to postpone my decision. I had to decide what to do right now.

I made my decision.

“That was five years ago,” I said. “I don’t recall her name.”