A: Right now, I’m staying at the Calusa Bay Hotel.
Q: By right now...
A: I moved there last night. When I first arrived in Calusa, I checked into a motel near the airport.
Q: When was that?
A: Sunday night.
Q: By Sunday night, do you mean Sunday, February twenty-ninth?
A: Yes. I know what Mr. Hope is thinking. He’s thinking I told him I’d arrived in Calusa only last night. But I was lying to him. I got here on Sunday.
Q: What time Sunday?
A: I took a flight from Newark at five-forty-five, I arrived in Calusa at a little past ten. I called my mother from the airport, I was planning to stay with her, but she was out. So I rented a car and looked for a motel.
Q: Why did you come to Calusa, Miss Purchase?
A: To talk to my mother.
Q: About what?
A: About the alimony payments. My father stopped the alimony payments. When I spoke to her on the phone Saturday, she was very upset. I decided to come down and talk to her personally. To try to comfort her. To figure out what we should do next. But she wasn’t home.
Q: So you checked into a motel instead.
A: Yes.
Q: Can you tell me the name of the motel?
A: Twin Ridges? Something like that. I don’t remember.
Q: What time did you check in?
A: It must’ve been close to ten-thirty.
Q: What did you do then?
A: I tried to reach my mother again. She was still out.
Q: Yes, go on.
A: I watched television for a little while. Then I tried her again, and there was still no answer. I was very eager to talk to her. It was my idea to confront my father. To go there together with my mother and demand... you see, my brother had already told her he wouldn’t help. I was the only one who could help her. But she wasn’t home.
Q: This was what time, Miss Purchase?
A: I’m not sure. A quarter to eleven, I would guess.
Q: What did you do then? When you couldn’t get your mother on the telephone.
A: I decided I’d go see my father alone. Without her. I knew just what I wanted to tell him, I didn’t need her with me.
Q: What did you want to tell him?
A: What do you think? That he had to pay the alimony. It was hers. They’d agreed to it. She deserved it.
Q: Did you, in fact, go to see your father?
A: Yes.
Q: You went to your father’s house on Jacaranda Drive?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you go there unannounced?
A: Yes. I didn’t want to call him because this was something that couldn’t be discussed on the telephone.
Q: What time did you get to the house on Jacaranda Drive?
A: Eleven-fifteen or so. I got lost. I don’t know Calusa too well.
Q: What did you do when you got there?
A: I parked the car in the driveway, and went to the front door, and rang the bell. There were lights on, I knew they were still up.
Q: They?
A: My father and Goldi — my father and his present wife.
Q: Maureen Purchase?
A: Yes.
Q: Were they both in fact there?
A: No. Only Maureen. She was the one who answered the door. She didn’t recognize me at first. I had to tell her who I was.
Q: What happened after you identified yourself?
A: She asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to talk to my father, and she told me he wasn’t there.
Q: Then what?
A: I asked her if I could come in. To see for myself that he wasn’t there. She said she was just about to go to bed, and I’d have to take her word for it. So I... she was starting to close the door. I shoved it open and went inside. She told me to get out, she tried to grab my arm, but I pushed her away and walked into the living room. My father wasn’t there, I looked in the bedroom, I looked in the kitchen, he wasn’t there. I was coming out of the kitchen when I heard her dialing the phone. I guess she was calling the police. Calling the police to evict me from my own... my own father’s house... There was a knife in the sink, I picked it up, I guess I had the idea of cutting the telephone cord. The phone was on a drop-leaf desk against the wall, she was sitting in a chair at the desk. She’d just finished dialing, she hadn’t yet said anything into the phone. She saw the knife in my hand and hung up right away, and shoved back the chair. The chair fell over, she sort of tripped on it, she was wearing a long pink nightgown, the skirt got tangled in one of the chair legs.
Q: Can you describe the nightgown, please?
A: It was pink nylon, a long flowing gown with a scoop neck and a rosette above the bosom.
Q: What else was she wearing?
A: Just the nightgown.
Q: Any jewelry?
A: A wedding band.
Q: Anything else?
A: Nothing.
Q: What happened after she hung up the phone?
A: She began screaming. I told her to shut up, was she crazy? But she kept screaming. I couldn’t stand her screaming like that. I threatened her with the knife—
Q: How?
A: I pushed it at her. I made a threatening gesture. To shut her up.
Q: Then what?
A: She ran past me, for the bedroom. I was afraid there might be an extension phone in there, so I ran after her. I didn’t want her calling the police and making false charges. She was trying to lock the door when I got to it, but I was stronger than she was, I simply pushed it open and went into the room. She kept backing away from me, she was really frightened by then, I think she thought I was going to hurt her. There was a walk-in closet opposite the door, at the far end of the bedroom. She ran into it and tried to keep me out, holding that door closed, too, but I pushed it open, and went in after her. There were clothes... you should have seen the clothes! He’d stopped sending my mother money, but Goldilocks had a closetful of clothes that must’ve cost a fortune. That’s what infuriated me. The clothes.
Q: Go on, Miss Purchase.
A: I stabbed her, that’s all.
Q: Go on.
A: She screamed, and I stabbed her again. She got by me somehow, she got into the bedroom again. I went after her, I chased her around the room, cutting her, she was, she kept grabbing for the walls, she got blood all over the walls. Then she ran back into the closet again, and tried to close the door, but I pushed it open, she was bleeding very badly by then. I grabbed her hair and pulled back her head, and cut her throat. She fell to the floor and I just kept stabbing her. And then, yes, I tried to take off her wedding band, but it wouldn’t come off. So I began cutting her finger, to get the wedding band off. It wouldn’t... I couldn’t cut through the bone.
Q: Why did you try to take off the wedding band?
A: It wasn’t hers. It wasn’t rightfully hers. It was my... my mother’s. It should have been my mother’s.
Q: Go on.
A: I heard something behind me, and I turned, and one of the little girls was standing in the door to the room. She’d heard her mother screaming, I guess, she was standing there in a blue nightgown, a baby-doll nightgown, with matching panties. I got up, I’d been on my knees trying to get the wedding band off. The little girl turned and ran, and I went after her. I didn’t want her... I didn’t want her telling what she’d seen. She’d seen me. I didn’t want her telling. I caught her just inside the door to her room. I stabbed her, and she fell to the floor, and then I stabbed her again to make sure she was dead. I kept stabbing her. The other little girl was still asleep, she’d slept through all the screaming, I couldn’t believe it. I went to her bed and stabbed her through the bedclothes. I forget how many times I stabbed her. Three or four times. Until she was dead.
Q: Why did you stab the second child? The first child saw you, but the second child...