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INNOCENCE BETRAYED PART TWO

Traumatized child hid her doubts

By Mary McCarty, Laura A. Bischoff

"My grandma is dead," 6-year-old Brooke Sutton tells Judy Johnson's close friend,

Bev Kaisk. "I know," the woman reassures her. "Grandma is in heaven now.

Nobody can ever hurt Grandma any more."

"I know," the girl says.

Just hours before, she had come home from Akron Children's Hospital, where she had surgery to repair internal lacerations from her rapist, the man she claimed was her Uncle Clarence. The man she claimed killed her grandmother.

She doesn't like all these people in the house. But it is quiet in her bedroom. Private. Mrs. Kaisk has come up to check on her.

They sit in silence until the girl says, "I think it sounded like him."

"Who? Clarence?" Kaisk asks, immediately regretting that she might be leading the girl.

The child nods yes.

"You don't know, honey?" Kaisk asks gently.

The girl briskly shakes her head no.

'We don't have

anything here'

At the Barberton police station, detectives ask Clarence Elkins to hand over his wedding ring, sneakers, black Rustler jeans, Cleveland Indians T-shirt, wristwatch and underwear.

He wants to cooperate, wants to clear up this misunderstanding. He has a strong belief in the American judicial system and harbors few reservations about going through a police interrogation without a lawyer by his side.

He allows detectives to scrape his fingernails for evidence and take photos of his hands. In his mind he has nothing to hide.

That morning his family stood along his gravel driveway with stricken looks on their faces as he was hauled off in handcuffs, but Clarence figured he'd be back to his trailer in Magnolia in no time.

His brother Jeff stands guard while police detectives tear apart the trailer, searching for evidence to tie Clarence to the murder scene. The detectives examine everything — clothes, bedding, drains. Outside, they snap photos of Clarence's white Ford Taurus and blue Chevy Impala, lifting fibers from the floor mats. Jeff tells them that his brother isn't capable of such a horrendous crime.

"If your brother didn't do it, who do you think could have done it?" an officer asks.

Police carry out the muddy jeans that Clarence wore the night before, the same ones he had on when he helped Jeff with the lawn work at his new home. Jeff recalls overhearing state Bureau of Criminal Identification Agent Charlie Snyder telling another detective, "We don't have anything here."

Inside Judy Johnson's house in Barberton, detectives drop items into white envelopes and brown paper bags: a broken fingernail, loose hairs, a bedsheet, a telephone, a pink nightgown, a denture, buttons, an empty canola oil bottle.

Police spend nearly five hours searching the 500-square-foot house, but anger the family with the results. They leave behind a blood-splattered bouquet that Johnson made for her daughter April's upcoming wedding. They tell a woman whose car was stolen from Johnson's neighborhood that night that detectives would look it over after it was recovered. She says she never heard from them again.

And then there's the bloody print that was left on the doorjamb inside Johnson's house. It is destroyed in processing, rendering it a useless clue.

'Who could do this?'

Five days after the murder, Judy Johnson is buried. As the cars make their solemn processional through Greenlawn Cemetery in Barberton, Melinda Elkins' white Ford Taurus overheats and blows its radiator cap.

At first she is embarrassed. As if she weren't conspicuous enough — the family pariah who was watched by the cops at the visitation in case she started to act up. At today's funeral, she first sits in the back before forcing family members to squeeze in and make room for her in the front row. But the more she thinks about it, the more appropriate she finds her car's ill-timed malfunction.

This was the car in which Clarence supposedly made the 40-mile trek from their trailer in Magnolia to Judy's house in Barberton in the middle of the night after closing time.

"See, I told you," she mentally taunts the plainclothes detectives there.

Clarence's whereabouts are accounted for nearly every minute of that night. Longtime friends see him at bars, all the way up to closing time at The Dugout in Waynesburg. And he stopped on the side of the road to help two friends with a flat tire. At what point did he turn from friendly roadside guy to raging killer?

Melinda thinks about this as she sits at the graveside with her boys standing behind her, shunned by the rest of her family. "I have nothing to say to you," her grandfather rebukes her.

Nobody will speak to her, look at her — not her younger sister April, Grandma Lillian Posten, her aunts, uncles, or childhood friends. "I'm on the outside looking in," she tells herself.

She leaves the cemetery without her husband, without her mother, without any of the people who had stood beside her all her life.

She is completely alone, except for her sons and her promise to her mother: "Mom, I will fight for the rest of my life to figure this out and to find out who did this to you."

From the beginning, Melinda knew Clarence couldn't, wouldn't and didn't do it — and from the beginning, nobody in the criminal justice system would believe her. The morning after the murder, Melinda got a funny feeling from the Barberton police detective who was interviewing her outside her sister's house. His body language and audible sighs give Melinda the impression the police even thought she had a role in the crime.

"No, I'm not going there," she vows. She decides not to obsess over her treatment by police. At her girlfriend's house, she sits down at the kitchen table and starts her own suspect list.

"Who could do this? Who?" she wonders. "Mom didn't have any enemies." In her backward-slanting handwriting, Melinda writes down the names of anyone she can think of: troublemakers from Judy's neighborhood, a man with whom Melinda had a brief fling. It's a short list, about four names, but it's a start.

If Melinda thought for a second that Clarence had done this to her mother, she would have told him to rot in hell. But she knows her husband, and in Melinda's mind the time line doesn't work. Police believe the crime was committed between 2:30 and 5:30 a.m. Melinda spoke with Clarence when he came home to their trailer around 2:45 a.m., after bar-closing time. Their son Brandon heard him, too. And a 17-year-old neighbor girl says she saw his car roll into the driveway around that time.

Melinda knows there is no way Clarence sneaked out without alerting Sam, their bark-happy German shepherd, drove 40 miles to Barberton, committed two rapes and a murder, drove home and arrived without a drop of blood anywhere, then silently slipped back into bed.

No way.

But that's what the police figure. They suspect Melinda wants to protect her husband.

"I will not accept this," Melinda pledges. "I have to do something."

'Who did you see

in the kitchen?'

Melinda is haunted by dueling images: Clarence sitting in the Summit County Jail in a bright orange jumpsuit, and the real killer walking free, her mother's blood rinsed from his hands and clothes.

A lot of names pop up during the police investigation, including Earl Mann, a violent criminal and longtime boyfriend of Judy's neighbor, Tonia Brasiel. Mann, the father of Brasiel's three daughters, was out of prison the night of the murder.

But the investigation remains focused on a single suspect: Clarence Elkins.

Police can't find a single hair, blood droplet or fingerprint from Elkins at the scene of the crime. But the lack of physical evidence does nothing to dissuade police or prosecutors.

Friends of Judy Johnson tell police that she feared her son-in-law, that the two argued frequently, and that Clarence once threatened Judy with a gun. Judy also wanted Melinda to dump Clarence, witnesses tell police, and Clarence wanted Judy to butt out of their marriage.

That's not how Melinda and Clarence describe the relationship. Clarence says he respected his mother-in-law; both say he never threatened her.

The police don't believe them. After all, they have the girl's statements.

Experts say eyewitness identifications, particularly in rape cases, can be wildly inaccurate and lead to wrongful convictions. But when prosecutors have a child pointing to a relative or known person — not a stranger — it is considered fairly reliable.

Brooke tells police it was Uncle Clarence. She tells psychologists it was Uncle Clarence. She tells her parents the same thing.

Deep down, though, she has never shaken off the doubts she first expressed to her grandma's friend, Bev Kaisk. But she feels that all the adults around her — police, prosecutors, parents — want her to stick to her story. They are so mad at Uncle Clarence, she thinks they're about ready to kill him.

Brooke wishes her mother would come into all the interview sessions to help her face the lawyers. But prosecutors ask April and David Sutton to avoid talking with their daughter about the case, avoid coaching or influencing her testimony, avoid tainting the death penalty case against Clarence.

The one time she expresses her doubts to prosecutors, Brooke recalls, she is alone. She says they fire questions at her: Weren't you sure before? You said it was Uncle Clarence all these other times?

Wishing she had her mom by her side, the child says nothing more about her doubts. If she says, "I'm not sure," maybe everyone will hate her, she thinks. Will stop speaking to her the way they've stopped speaking to her Aunt Mindy.

Seven months after her 7th birthday, the girl makes her courtroom debut as the star witness. It has been a year since she glimpsed her attacker in the dark before being beaten unconscious.

Sitting on the witness stand, her feet not touching the floor, the girl answers innocuous questions from the prosecutor, Rebecca Doherty, the sort of questions adults ask kids to get them talking: What grade are you in? Where do you go to school?

Doherty's questions gradually move to Grandma Judy and the noise that woke the girl from her slumber. She can barely manage more than two- or three-word answers.

"Who did you see in the kitchen?" Doherty asks.

"Clarence," the child answers.

She testifies about how she ran back to the bedroom, passed Grandma on the living room floor, and went back to sleep, waking to find that the killer followed her.

"Tell me what his face looked like, if you can," Doherty says.

Brooke cannot find the words so she responds by making a mean face, scrunching up her eyebrows.

Eventually, Doherty asks the child where Uncle Clarence is now. Brooke points her finger at the man in a black suit.

"Your Honor, I would ask the record to reflect she has identified the defendant," Doherty says.

Bev Kaisk takes the stand for the defense and describes the child's uncertainty the night she came home from the hospital.

During a sidebar, Assistant Prosecutor Michael Carroll tells the judge: "I think this woman is nuts."

Clarence's defense team fails to convince jurors of the importance of DNA tests that exclude Clarence as a contributor to crime scene evidence. They also fail to poke holes in the testimony from the prosecution's witnesses.

It bothers defense attorney Larry Whitney that Tonia Brasiel never called police, but he doesn't notice that Brasiel may have left the girl on the porch for up to 45 minutes. Besides, he's reluctant to anger jurors with pit-bull questions for someone who seems to be an innocent bystander.

On the witness stand, Brasiel tells the jury that the child came to her door at 6:50 a.m. and she took the shaken girl home only seven to 10 minutes later, making the short drive in about four minutes with the child and her own three daughters in tow. Then the child's father immediately dashed off wearing only boxer shorts, desperate to check on his mother-in-law, she said. He called 911 a few minutes after 8 a.m.

Whitney never asks Brasiel about the extra 45 minutes or so. He never asks the child how long she stood on Brasiel's porch or if Brasiel even invited her inside.

"Why didn't you just call the police there?" Whitney asks Brasiel on the stand.

"I had all them kids screaming, and I just, she asked me to take her home. I really didn't think of it," Brasiel says. "Everybody was just crying."

'You watch me'

The jury deliberates for 13 hours. Two female jurors are crying as they enter Judge John Adams' courtroom. A couple of male jurors shoot Clarence a dirty look — a bad sign, Melinda suspects.

Melinda, Clarence's parents and his five brothers wear yellow ribbons pinned to their lapels as signs of hope. "For sure he'll be coming home," thinks Nancy Elkins, Clarence's mother.

The quiet, petite woman sits through the entire trial and bites her tongue every time someone gives testimony she knows in her heart can't be true. She resists the urge to jump up and shout, "I know they're lying!"

The first verdict is read: Not guilty of aggravated murder.

The courtroom erupts into pandemonium. Elkins' family is overjoyed. "We're home free," Nancy Elkins tells herself.

Judge Adams pounds his gavel to restore order and decorum before the next verdicts are read. On the charge of murder? Guilty.

On the charge of attempted aggravated murder? Guilty.

On the charges of rape? Guilty.

Clarence puts his head in his hands and cries. Melinda wails, collapses and sobs in a heap on the floor. As her husband is led away in handcuffs, Melinda calls out, "I love you, Clarence!"

"I love you, too," he says.

On the way home, Clarence calls Melinda on someone's cell phone, trying to console her with upbeat talk about an appeal.

"An appeal? Another year of this?" Melinda wonders.

Already, she has been forced to sell their trailer and four acres. She was hospitalized for exhaustion and lost one job after Barberton police — thinking she was covering up for her husband — began asking questions about her. She went on welfare for a time and has struggled to stretch the family finances to cover the rent, utilities and Clarence's legal bills, which have already exceeded $50,000. Her in-laws — the only family who still speaks to her — have taken to dropping off groceries for her and her rapidly growing teenage boys.

As Melinda heads home to her rented trailer in South Canton, she dreads what she has to do next: tell their sons Dad is not coming home. Melinda hurries to reach them before they see the verdict on the TV news.

Brandon, 13, begins pacing. Sixteen-year-old Clarence Jr. punches a hole in the laundry room drywall. Then, an eerie calm steals over them as they sit on the couch with their mother, holding on to one another.

Two weeks later, Judge Adams starts the sentencing hearing by declaring Clarence a sexual predator. He refuses to sign the document, refuses to admit to something he is not. Melinda swells with pride at his act of defiance.

Nobody asks Melinda to make a statement in court on behalf of the victim's family. It is her sister, April Sutton, who speaks on behalf of their mother, Judy Johnson.

"I hope you plead for your life every day in prison the way my mother and daughter begged you to spare them," she tells Clarence, whom she has known since she was 8. "You deserve to be raped every day of your life."

Brooke's recorded statement is played at the sentencing hearing: "You shouldn't get a second chance because my grandma didn't get a second chance," she says. "You left me all alone and broke my heart and now I am feeling empty. At one time I loved you, but now I hate you."

"Now I hate you." Elkins shakes his head in disbelief. "I would like to tell everyone, let everyone know I am an innocent man," he says. "I feel this justice system here has failed, very much so. I would like to thank my God, my family and my friends for all their support. That's all."

Judge Adams sentences Elkins to 15 years to life for murder, 10 years for raping Judy Johnson, 10 years for raping the girl, life in prison for raping the child with force.

"Each of these sentences ... is to be run consecutively with each other," the judge announces.

After the sentencing, Summit County Prosecutor Michael Callahan tells reporters Melinda Elkins won't get her husband back until 2054 — Clarence's earliest parole date.

"Oh, yeah?" Melinda thinks. "You watch me."