I drove into town to see Fitzgerald this morning. I always expect his office to be near other lawyers, or next to the courts, or somewhere more atmospheric than an office block with a charity clothes shop next to the entrance. I took in my notes of points to query for Susie’s appeal. He didn’t seem all that interested in getting my input. He frowned as I spoke, drawing his gray eyebrows down over his eyes like duvets. I felt like a deluded idiot who’d been wasting my own time and was now intent on wasting his. I was reluctant to leave the Dictaphone tape with him in case it got lost, because he didn’t seem very concerned at all. I explained what it said anyway.
He sat me down and told me that the reports were being done on Susie. They were due to have the sentencing hearing in a few weeks, but of course I must understand that murder always meant life. He was a lot less friendly than he has been, for reasons that I can’t fathom. I’m touchy, I know I am, but it makes me feel suspicious, and I wondered briefly whether he threw the case. It’s stupid. He did very well, even the papers said he did well. I must come up with better things for him to base an appeal on. I need to work harder.
When I came home, I wrote a long letter to Susie, an encouraging letter, telling her that I’d had a good meeting with Fitzgerald. I finished it and got halfway through dialing Harvey Tucker’s number, but I hung up. He’s not going to phone me back. Even if he did, I don’t know whether I could stand to ask him about Susie. What if he tells me all the things I don’t want to hear? There’s just the faintest possibility, but it niggles me. If I’m going to find any grounds for appeal, I have to approach this with an open mind. It doesn’t really matter what I feel about Susie spending time with Gow. If she did, well then she did, but I need to know so we can answer those points in an appeal. I have to put my own feelings aside. I’m determined to make a contribution to her appeal; I want to help.
Box 1 Document 2 Notes from Susie’s Trial
Police Constable McCallum, who gave this evidence, was very young and seemed scared of the court. He gave a lot of details that I thought irrelevant. He was then quizzed about the details by both sides. This is word for word as I took it down:
PC: Mr. Gow’s body was found in the abandoned bothy above Inshore Loch.
Prosecution asked for a definition of “bothy.” PC said it was a “single-room dwelling on hills, used by walkers for shelter.” Judge snickery because the lawyer didn’t know what a bothy was.
PC: Approach to bothy over a mile from road. Well-worn path, familiar to hikers. Out of season, no one there. Police alerted by anonymous caller. Never discovered identity, but call came from a public phone booth that would only be known to a local. Bothy facing north on loch side. Windows broken, no door. Roof collapsed in on west side. Bothy itself: very dark on entry. [PC shaking.] Victim lying on side, facing back wall. Could see hands tied tightly behind back with plastic tag.
Prosecution asked why “tightly”?
PC: Hands very, very swollen.
How swollen?
PC: Hands about double size and purple. Thought they were gloves at first. Plastic digging deep into skin; wrists bloody. Victim missing one shoe, never found. Stepping to left, PC noticed Gow’s injuries. A lot of blood on the floor and under his head. Mouth obscured by blood. No, sir…
I think he was questioned by someone here. My writing goes all wonky, as if I’m not sure I should bother taking it down.
PC: I couldn’t see. It was very dark… Yes, sir, I use a flashlight. Even then, it was still v. dark. Couldn’t see a weapon at this stage [I think this is what I’m writing here.] And the tongue…
Oh, God, the tongue. The dreaded tongue.
PC: had been…
He gulped here, I remember. Everyone leaned forward to catch what he was going to say. Even the impassive stenographer tipped one degree toward him. The blood drained from the PC’s face as he said it.
PC: removed.
Everyone in the public galleries recoiled and gasped. The mustardy old man who was sitting in front of me clapped his hands to his face, as though they were coming after his tongue next, and a couple of old women in front of me held on to each other. Who were these ridiculous people? It really must be the height of cant to wait for a place in the public gallery at a murder trial and then act surprised when violence is mentioned. Why go to so much trouble to hear the details and then get indignant the very moment their prurience is satisfied?
Susie did herself no favors by turning around and tutting at them. The papers said she was callous, but she’s a medic: she was having bits thrown at her when she was in her teens.
The only genuine response came from Stevie Ray, who sobbed loudly. Everyone knew he was Gow’s manager; he’d been on any TV show that offered pocket change. He’s effectively unemployed now that his only client is dead, but there was no sympathy for him in the gallery. Everyone just looked away and left him crying like a bullied boy in a playground.
PC: Clean removal from the root, not gouged.
How would he know?
PC: Tongue later found in corner of room. Sitting on newspaper. Lot of blood from mouth on floor. Face clean on upper cheek, suggesting not moved since tongue cut. Deep wound on underside of head, probably initial wound. Checked for pulse.
F’sake! Half his head f’ing missing!
PC: Found victim was dead.
No!
PC: For ten minutes searched front and back of bothy for other persons. No one there. Called for backup.
From the crime-scene photos and the aerial photograph in the paper, it was clear that the bothy was a single room with one doorway, sitting on a continuous slope. There was nowhere to hide. The PC could have searched the whole area by stepping outside and turning his head left and right, but neither lawyer asked about the missing ten minutes. I think they assumed he was out the back being sick. Maybe we could make something of this? He could have been contaminating the evidence in some way.
Susie didn’t do it. I’ve known this from the moment they raised the evidence about the tongue and the hands. Gow may have been left in the fetal position so that he bled to death, but anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of first aid could have done this. She wouldn’t have cut his tongue out or stabbed him on the side of his head either. Because she’s a doctor, she would have killed him more cleanly and she’d never have tied his hands up like that. I knew she was innocent before this evidence, and I’ve never doubted her. I still don’t doubt her.
Box 2 Document 2 Interview with Donna, Woman’s World, 4/24/98
The photographs of Donna make her look pretty. She had an electrifying figure and a nice smile, that’s undeniable. There’s a picture of her standing underneath the maximum-security prison sign in full wedding gown. The sentence structures in this article are horribly clunky. Imagine the corrosive effect this sort of magazine has on the language of people who read it week after week.
A woman’s wedding day is supposed to the happiest of her life, yet Donna McGovern was searched on her way into the service and spent her wedding night alone. Alone she may be, but Donna, 23, has no doubt that she made the right decision.
“Andrew is the man for me,” says Donna. “I know he is innocent and I will stand by him until he is released.”
But Donna may be waiting for the rest of her life, for her new husband is one of Britain ’s most notorious serial killers. He has been called the Water Rat, the Riverside Ripper, and “just plain evil” by the daughter of one of his victims.