“I mean, I’ve seen Dick mad before. You know? I’ve seen him mad. And I didn’t want to be nowhere around in case he knew that I actually did see him on top of this girl. You know?”
“Do you think there’s any way that Dick or somebody could have brought down one or two? One was burned and maybe the other one was still left alive and somebody else down there did something to them?”
“I can’t say. I don’t know. I mean, well, possible. I last saw them at his house and that was the last time I saw him. I really didn’t know what was going on. I mean, I put two and two together a little bit here, but I didn’t think anyone was gonna be hurt, that they were gonna be hurt or anything like that.”
“Well, tell me what you put together. It’s important to try to figure out how this thing kind of—”
“I just kind of figured, why would my uncle, when he’s got a nice-lookin’ wife, be with a young girl? I don’t know. Maybe he’s just trying to live his youth or whatever. You know? I guess I didn’t hear right in my mind because at that time, I wasn’t thinking about molesting any girls or anything like that. That didn’t happen until years later, and I don’t know why that happened. I guess whatever snapped. I just thought it was kind of strange that he was with one of them, and she wasn’t screaming or anything like that, so I couldn’t say if it was mutual at the time or if he was forcing himself and just wore her out or what.”
“What if he choked her out?”
“That could have been. I mean, her eyes were closed. She wasn’t looking at me or anything like that. Her eyes were closed, so I don’t know if he had her drugged up, you know, or what. I didn’t see the other girl, so I didn’t know where she was at.”
“Probably beat her with something,” said Dave.
“Could have. I don’t know.”
“And she was the one in the bag, unfortunately,” said Dave, speculating.
“Like I said, I got scared shitless and I left. Didn’t want no part of it, and to this day I still don’t want no part of it. I mean, if I actually had to get up on the stand and testify what I saw to prove my innocence, I would do it. Right in front of him.”
“Yeah, I mean, look what they’ve done to you.”
Lloyd continued to assert his innocence. “Even if you offered me freedom and charges dropped, I still couldn’t tell you what happened to those girls and where they’re at. Because I had no part in it. I didn’t touch them. I didn’t walk them out of the mall. I didn’t do none of that.”
Dave now returned to Helen’s journal, Katie’s fiction.
“There was some stuff in there, Lloyd, but she’s not here to explain it. There was stuff in there about the station wagon with the seats laid back. There was stuff in there about you hurting kids and she felt bad about it. So, you read it for what it is. It could have been out of frustration.”
“I believe it was,” said Lloyd.
“Or there is truth to it. If someone would just stand up and say, ‘Look, this is what the fuck happened!’” Dave banged his hand on the desk. “Then we could go back and figure it out, but that’s not what’s going on. They’re giving these little pieces because they want to remove themselves,” which was, of course, exactly what Lloyd was doing. Dave asked him to explain what he thought had happened.
“I think Uncle Dick killed them. I honestly do. Out of frustration, anger, or whatever, you know? Maybe they didn’t do what he wanted them to do, and he killed them.”
“How long do you think that they were alive?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t say if he got rid of them that day that I saw them, the next day. I know my dad used to go over there a lot.”
“And, see, that’s the stuff that we need to know, because they’re testifying that he’s the one that called Lizzie.”
“He probably did,” said Lloyd, accepting what, minutes earlier, he had dismissed as “a crock of shit.”
Lloyd was distinctly uncomfortable. He no doubt could feel the probe closing in, and he was still evading, but for once he seemed unsure of his next move.
THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER WITH
After four hours, Dave left and Katie stepped in. She buttered Lloyd up at length, going on about how much better a person he was than the rest of his family, how much more cooperative he was. Then she pleaded with him to help himself by helping them. They were on his side!
Lloyd listened politely and held fast.
Mark joined them. He sat in a chair alongside Lloyd, facing him, and for a while he just listened to Katie’s efforts. Then he started showing Lloyd photos of the materials found at the burn site. The evidence, he said, corroborated the stories his cousins had told.
“We just want the truth,” said Katie. “None of us want to keep doing this.”
That much was true. The investigation had taken over her life to such an extent that it was causing problems at home. She had left off working on child-abuse cases because they were emotionally exhausting, only to be drawn into the worst case of her career. It was consuming her, stealing part of her soul. She had begun working with a therapist to deal with it. She hadn’t told the department about that; she was paying for the therapy herself. Her physical health had suffered. She blamed it on the long hours and the stress. As a mother, she looked at Mary Lyon and could not imagine being in her place. But she took pains not to let any of this show, especially to her colleagues. Before Lloyd, everything she did and said was a performance.
“Look, this is a race,” she told him. “We’ve got all these people that have something to lose at this point. Whoever gets over the finish line first, meaning whoever’s gonna come and just break and tell us the truth first, is the one that is in the best position. Everybody is starting to crumble.”
Lloyd said he knew nothing more.
Then Mark used a different approach, something they had not tried. He had catalogued Lloyd’s lies. The list was nothing short of astonishing.
“I would ask you to think, as I say this, put yourself in a position of a reasonable person. You’re a reasonable guy. But if you are a reasonable person listening to this case, what would you think when I get to the end?”
He then reviewed the list, item by item. Lloyd kept trying to interrupt, but Mark wouldn’t let him. It was extensive. It started with the original 1975 story, which Lloyd had admitted at the time was mostly a lie. Then there was one he’d made up in his first conversation with Dave. “You say, ‘I was never at Wheaton Plaza. I never talked to any police. I don’t remember any of that.’”
“No, I said I was there that day.”
“No, you initially said that you weren’t.”
Then there was the failed polygraph administered by Katie. Then it was telling Dave that the kidnappers were Teddy and the older man he lived with. When it was pointed out that Teddy had been just eleven, Mark continued, “you finally come around and say, ‘Okay, it was Dick that was with us. Dick was driving the car.’”
Then Mark reminded Lloyd that he had said he thought the girls had been raped, killed, and burned.
“Do you remember saying that?”