Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [187]
“Did you meet her as she was leaving?”
“Yes, I did. And she said, ‘Kassandra I can’t talk to my sisters. I am supposed to go home and obey my husband.’ Warren Jeffs then told me to encourage her to be happy where she was placed.”
The state’s final witness was Jane Blackmore, the midwife who had taken care of me in Canada after my stillbirth. It was smart thinking on the prosecution’s part to include Jane’s testimony of her treatment of me during my pregnancy and stillbirth so that the Walls didn’t come across as some self-important troupe of sisters out to get the prophet for no solid reason. I appreciated Jane’s participation; the stakes for her were quite high. Her life was very much entwined with the FLDS, and many of her children remained loyal to the sect. In publicly speaking out against the church she faced losing these children forever, but she did it because she knew it was right.
After Jane’s testimony, we took a short break. Gathering in Brock’s office, in the building next door to the courthouse, the prosecutorial team invited me in and we talked about how to proceed. We came to the decision that the state would rest. There was a lot more evidence and also more witnesses to give accounts of the FLDS culture, Warren Jeffs, and underage marriages. But we chose to keep it short and simple, and I had faith in the prosecuting attorneys. They had done their job well. We had presented the truth, and though we wondered if it was enough, we returned to the courthouse that afternoon and much to the surprise of the defense team, rested the state’s case.
Even though we’d provided the defense with a lengthy collection of names to counter the list of seventy-seven potential witnesses they’d turned over, the prosecutors were confident that providing the jury with the simple facts would win a conviction. I’d been disappointed to see some of the people on the defense’s list. They had pitted family against family. Every person that we had on our witness list was countered by that witness’s family members, who would testify against the witness. The most troubling name was my mother’s, although I was pretty confident it had been placed there more for intimidation. Still, I was saddened to think that Mom was possibly out there hurt by my actions, actions that I knew she didn’t understand because the priesthood and even Warren Jeffs still had a solid hold on her mind. I was sure that others were looking down on her for the bad things that her children were supposedly doing against the church, and I imagined that she and my sisters were suffering as a result of their scorn.
The defense team had not expected our case to end so promptly, and Wally Bugden asked for a short break to prepare his witnesses. When we returned that afternoon, he called Jennie Pipkin, my FLDS friend who, along with her husband, had accompanied Allen and me on our camping trip in an attempt to perk up Lily. Jennie’s anxiety was visible, and her knee bounced uncontrollably. We caught eyes for a moment, and I mouthed “Hi” to my old friend, but she promptly looked away. I watched in quiet empathy as Jennie was sworn in. Wearing a cobalt-blue pioneer-style gown, with her hair carefully coifed in a classic no-frills FLDS style and not a drop of makeup to conceal the exhaustion in her face, Jennie nervously took a seat in the witness box.
The contrast between her appearance and that of the Wall sisters must have alarmed the jury. She was a walking embodiment of the restriction that had been placed on my sisters and me during our lives as members of the FLDS. But as soon as Jennie’s testimony began, I would realize that she, along with her fellow witnesses, had clearly been instructed to dress in this manner to appear innocent and unworldly—or, as outsiders would call it, uncultured. But I couldn’t imagine her dressed any other way.
Even more transparent than Jennie’s appearance was the degree of prep work she must have endured before standing