Acre Under a Green Sky

It was during one of our daylight suppers that my mother inadvertently changed my father's perspective on these murders. I don't remember the incident, but he often said, "It was Nora who pinned the whole thing down in a way."

What she apparently said was, "Big deal! A couple of nosey old biddies get knocked off, and the whole world comes screeching to a halt!"

My mother changed my father's focus from Gwen to Estelle; and to all that Estelle had in common with Janet. It was so obvious, and while it was not the answer, it was the key to understanding what happened. My grandfather always insisted that he had played the Estelle card long before my mother had, and he was right, too.

The trial was already underway before I realized it.

I was on my way to the pool one morning when I saw an unfamiliar car parked in front of the Eagle house. Angel was sitting behind the wheel pretending to drive. Then Rod and Mrs. Eagle came out of the house with Old Lady Eagle in her highbacked wheelchair. They were all dressed for Church on a Tuesday.

Rod and Mrs. Eagle each took one arm of the wheelchair and lifted Old Lady Eagle down the porch steps as if she were a Roman noblewoman on a litter. She looked like a noblewoman as a matter of fact –– regal and self-possessed. They continued on down the walk to the sidewalk by the car. Only then did I ask if I could help.

Rod opened the front car door while Mrs. Eagle helped Old Lady Eagle out of the chair and into the passenger seat.

"That's never going to fit in the trunk, you know," I said, indicating the wicker wheelchair.

"They'll have one for us at the Courthouse in Lincoln," Mrs. Eagle said, trumping me with a snide squint. I half expected her to stick her tongue out at me.

"Why are you going to the Courthouse?"

"To testify!" Old Lady Eagle said, raising her arm as if she were leading a charge. Her smile was exquisite, and I think those were her real teeth. She was wearing a little black hat that clasped over her head like modern-day headphones with a little bunch of tiny red roses to one side over her ear. I think the roses were real, too, and I figured she got them to match her long, black dress with tiny red roses patterned throughout. I wondered how long it took to button those shiny little black buttons all the way up the front of the dress from her ankles to her neck. Must have taken hours.

Mrs. Eagle looked nice, too –– all scrubbed and shaved for the event. She'd had her hair done and carried the slickest black purse I'd ever seen. You could see yourself in it. Her dress was blue, and her stockings were flesh colored, but not at all shear. They wrinkled and bagged like long, flesh-colored socks. Her feet were bad, so she wore white sandals. That was definitely a fashion blunder. Even I knew that.

"Whose car?" I asked.

"I hired it for the day," Rod said with that voice, and he touched the top of my head. He closed the back seat door for his mother; then he did something strange.

He got down on his haunches in front of me, and said, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, sure. Why?"

"No reason. I just wondered. You seem changed."

They had a devil of a time getting Angel out from behind the wheel. Then they were off –– leaving Angel and me on the sidewalk with the wheelchair. Angel was crying, and I couldn't bring myself to console him.

"Changed?! What an asshole!" I said aloud, "Maybe he is queer, after all."

The Daily News made a big deal out of what happened in court that day. My father had arranged to have Old Lady Eagle's alarm clock brought in and placed exactly ten feet from her; duplicating the distance in her bedroom that night. He had the lights turned out and asked her to read the luminous hands and face of the clock. She read, "Ten o'clock!" which was about the time she was testifying that morning. He asked her to look again; to make sure she was right. Once again, she swore it was ten o'clock; but when the lights came up, it was obvious to everyone that the clock actually read, "Ten to twelve".

As gently as possible, he suggested that she had a preconceived idea of the time even before she looked at the clock. Perhaps the same thing happened the night of the murders. She had already admitted that she had trouble getting to sleep. Didn't it feel like two in the morning when she was awakened by a scream that night? Yes, she agreed. And isn't it possible that she misread the clock that night in exactly the same way she did in court. Yes, she agreed, it was possible. Might it have been ten minutes after midnight and not 2AM when she was awakened by a scream from outside her window? Yes, she agreed that it might have been shortly after midnight, but it sure seemed later.

So, Bradley's "established time" for the murders was brought seriously into doubt. The coroner testified that it could have been anytime between 9PM and 4AM; a seven hour span. And Billy Kiernan, the pale-eyed bartender, had already testified that Luka was with him in the Royal Grill until 1:30AM; a good hour and twenty minutes after Old Lady Eagle apparently heard a scream coming from the Death House. And so, one of Matt Bradley's key witnesses for the prosecution was 'turned' into a witness for the defense.

What the Daily News failed to mention; but I was told later, was that Mrs. Eagle punched my father on the shoulder before wheeling her mother out of the courtroom. I would love to have seen that. She called him 'Satan' and punched him on the shoulder.

Everyone was patting my father on the back for his ingenious use of the clock, and my father gloried in it. My grandfather was not impressed. He said it was a "supremely stupid trick". He called my father a showoff and an amateur, and said, "Never trust luck in a courtroom, stupid. Never take risks."

My grandfather rarely observed the trial; but when he did, he sat at the defense table with my father and Luka. I know my father resented the implication that my grandfather was a member of the defense team; perhaps even the senior member. The old man had contributed nothing to the case except a few suggestions, some inside information, and a lot of criticism. He was dead set against taking the case in the first place, and now he was basking in my father's glow; sucking up reflected glory like a kid with a straw. Still, my grandfather was a highly respected attorney in the community, and he and the judge were friendly if not actually friends; so my father swallowed his pride and borrowed some of my grandfather's clout as an elder statesman. Not a bad exchange, actually.

Sometime later that day, Joe Scarceletti testified for the prosecution that he and Gwen attended a Church meeting that night in Lincoln. No one asked the purpose of the meeting or the name of the Church for that matter. He said that he picked her up in town at 7:30PM, and after the meeting, dropped her off near her home about 10:30PM. My father had no questions; acceding that Gwen was away from her home during the hours so stipulated. And Joe left the stand a happy man.

Apparently, it was Will Mosko who had ironed out an agreement between my father and Matt Bradley so that Joe would be spared any embarrassing revelations about that night. It would have served no useful purpose for either side. But I've always wondered if it wasn't really Gwen that Will wanted to spare. Perhaps it was both Gwen and Joe. At any rate, my father was able to suggest that the murders had taken place between 10:30PM and 2AM when Luka got home drunk and blindly passed through the carnage and into bed. And; of course, Matt Bradley objected, saying the murders could just as easily have happened 'after' Luka got home. He found almost everything my father said objectionable, which leads me to another sparkling moment I witnessed myself days later in the trial.

Throughout, wherever possible, Matt Bradley tried to establish an order of death in the case. He theorized that Luka and Gwen had an argument downstairs, and that Luka threatened her with a knife. The argument moved upstairs into their bedroom where Luka stabbed her to death. Then, in a kind of bloodlust, he killed Marilyn in her bedroom and then Jeff hiding in the bathroom. According to Bradley, Estelle was trying to escape through the back door when Luka caught her in the kitchen.

The coroner flatly refused to testify to an accurate order of death. He simply didn't know, but he did agree that it could have happened that way. Under cross-examination, my father asked the coroner if it wasn't his experience in a mass murder that the murder weapon is most often abandoned with the last victim. And wasn't the knife found in the bathtub with the boy, Jeff? So, might we assume that Jeff was the last to die? That was likely, he conceded. My father then asked the coroner if he was familiar with earlier testimony identifying the murder weapon as a kitchen utensil from the defendant's own kitchen.

Yes, the coroner knew that.

"Were you aware that it was the defendant himself who identified the knife for police detectives?"

"So stipulated," groaned Matt Bradley, never rising from his chair at the prosecution table.

Yes, the coroner knew that, too. And since one of the victims was found murdered in the kitchen where the knife was kept, might we assume that she was the first to die. The coroner said that the idea made sense, but still he could not say in what order the victims died.

"Isn't it possible," my father said, "that the killer had an argument with the old woman and then grabbed whatever weapon was at hand and struck her down?"

Matt Bradley jumped to his feet and shouted, "Objection!", as if he'd just been given a hotfoot. Everyone looked at him as if he were crazy. What was he objecting to now? It was the third or fourth time we'd seen him overreact to something unseen.

"Overruled," the judge said.

What Matt Bradley saw was my father pointing to the specter of Janet McConnell there in the courtroom. No one else saw her, but she was there from the very start –– and while any mention of the her murder was strictly forbidden by the Court, my father took every opportunity to remind the jury in a very surreptitious way that a second unsolved murder had been committed since Luka's arrest. My father would be the first to admit that his attempts to interject Janet's murder were subliminal to the point of being non-existent, but Bradley jumped to his feet every time crying, "Objection!" He was supersensitive to any hint of Janet McConnell no matter how obscure, and my father decided to play on Matt's fear of ghosts mostly because it was fun, but also because it might lead to something helpful. It did.

Once again, my father was hinting at Janet's murder:

". . . the killer had an argument with the old woman and then grabbed whatever weapon was at hand and struck her down." In the one case the 'old woman' was Janet; and in the other, Estelle. In the one case the 'weapon' was a garden hoe; and in the other, a kitchen knife. The similarities were remarkable, but there were only two people in the world who saw them; my father and Matt Bradley. The jury didn't have a clue. But now, Bradley was on his feet doing what my father had failed to do.

"Objection, your honor! The defense is trying to draw a parallel between this murder case and one under investigation. There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that the murders of the Luka family have anything to do with the murder of their neighbor."

Matt Bradley knew what he'd done to himself before his last words were out of his mouth. He would have gladly eaten his tongue at that point, but all he could do was slump down into his chair. The judge overruled his objection again, and my father continued his cross-examination.

"Do you remember the question, sir?"

"No."

"Isn't it likely that the killer was having an argument with Estelle in the kitchen and that he or she grabbed the knife from the countertop and stabbed Estelle, then went upstairs to dispose of the witnesses ending with the little boy, Jeff, in the bathroom?"

"No sir, it is not likely. But it is possible."

"That's all. Thank you."

Then there were days and days of boring testimony from a parade of staid-looking forensic experts about blood and Luka's skin tissue found under Marilyn's fingernails. After a few hours of this, even Matt Bradley lapsed into a mind-numbing monotone. Most of the time, my father endeared himself to the jury by asking no questions of these men, but he did establish that there was no blood found on the clothing and shoes Luka removed downstairs before going to bed, and that the blood on his body and on the underwear he was wearing that night was consistent with a man sleeping in a bed saturated with blood and then touching; even embracing the bodies of his murdered family.

And here's where Matt Bradley finally redeemed himself. My father established that there was no blood on the clothes Luka took off downstairs before going to bed suggesting that he had come home after the murders. Had those clothes been there throughout the grizzly murder scene, surely some blood would have landed on them. Good point, but Bradley came back for re-direct with a question that would forever change my father's opinion of him.

"Was there any blood 'under' Mr. Luka's clothes?"

"No."

"So, judging by the evidence, those clothes might just as well have been placed there on the stair railing yesterday?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Or they might have been there the whole time Gwen, Marilyn, Jeff and Estelle were being slaughtered?"

"That's right. Either way."

"I guess those articles of clothing don't help us one way or the other, do they?"

"No sir, they don't."

"Oh, one thing more; just to recap. That blood all over Mr. Luka and his underwear. Would that be consistent with a man taking a knife and stabbing his wife four times and his daughter two times and his son five times and his mother-in-law fourteen times?"

"Yes sir, it would."

But, to be fair, my father got some last licks in.

"Was it the fourteenth blow that killed the mother-in-law?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Did it take fourteen stabs to kill Estelle?"

"Most of the wounds were indiscriminate occurring after the fatal wound to the heart."

"In a rage?"

"It appears so."

"Wasn't he or she tired? I mean, after subduing and killing the three upstairs; how many did you say, eleven stab wounds all together? And then to go downstairs, and stab and stab and stab and stab fourteen times?"

"Yes, I see what you mean. The evidence would suggest that it was the mother-in-law attacked first. It was certainly the most violent attack. Whereas the others had mostly defensive wounds to the hands, arms, and legs prior to the lethal wounds."

"So, the first; the mother-in-law was a punishing attack? And with the others, it was an intent to kill?"

"It appears so. That would be consistent with my experience."

"You've been very patient, thank you."

As far as the skin found under Marilyn's fingernails, my father had just two questions: Is there any way to know when Marilyn might have scratched her father?

"Sometime after the last time she cleaned her fingernails."

"So it might have happened anytime during the twenty-four hours preceding the murders?"

"Assuming she didn't clean her fingernails in that time."

"Thank you."

And that's where Garry and I came in.