Thought You Might Like to Read a Creepy Short.
Shaken, Not Stirring
The crowd had the look of an old southern congregation, sitting on the pew-style courtroom benches and fanning themselves against the raging afternoon heat. Janet Thatch leaned in close to her friend, Angie, to mutter indignantly.
“I can’t believe she’s doing this. She said that she’d never take a plea bargain!”
“Well she’s got to think about Katie. Katie’s only five and she needs her mother.” Angie reminded Janet. “I still believe in her. She could never have done such a horrible thing.”
“I guess you’re right Angie. I just wanted her to go through the trial and prove that she was innocent. But that’s easy for me to say, I’m not facing twenty-five years in prison.” Janet said as she straightened up in her seat to watch the proceedings.
The subject of their conversation was Connie Towmann. Up until the previous February, Connie had just been one of the many midwestern housewives going about their mundane, domestic missions in the suburban developments and strip malls of southwest Kansas. She shopped, kept house, and took care of her family. But today, after a gut-wrenching trial that had spanned endless weeks, she finally walked out of the county courthouse as a free woman. Well, she wasn't entirely free. She wasn’t going to jail, but her agreement to a plea bargain left her with a five-year relationship with a probation officer and her own personal dark cloud of suspicion. Even before she stepped into the light of the unseasonably warm August sun, the crowd buzzed with whispers of gossip and doubt.
There were those who were convinced that Connie was a vicious baby killer. But there was also a legion of friends and supporters, who had held car washes, bake sales, and various other events to raise contributions for Connie’s defense fund. The long nightmare began two days after the most recent Valentine's Day when 13-month-old Garrett stopped breathing. Connie and Wayne sat stunned on opposite sides of the room after Dr. Ian Jacobs told them that little Garrett was dead. Their lives changed irrevocably in that instant as the two young parents sat numbly and processed the reality that their infant son was gone. Even as they sat in disbelief, Dr. Jacobs was dialing the sheriff's department. Since Connie had been the only adult in the house with the baby at the time of his death, she was arrested and charged with his murder. For the next six months, expert witnesses battled tooth and nail. One assertively insisted that Garrett Towmann had died because he had been violently shaken, causing his brain to suffer tremendous trauma from slamming back and forth within his skull. The defense offered the testimony of an equally credentialed expert who insisted just as vehemently that in all his years in medicine he had never seen a verified case of ‘shaken baby syndrome’. Defense attorneys advanced the theory that a fall the little boy had taken two days prior to his death had caused a slow swelling in his brain that eventually killed him.
“There is no such thing as shaken baby syndrome!” Dr. Urlacher insisted firmly on behalf of the defense.
CNN had attached itself to the story like a pit bull on a pork chop and refused to let go. They covered the trial, they covered the trial-watchers, and they covered Connie’s loyal friends. They even covered the coverage. Meanwhile, Connie’s friends helped raise money for her bond and funds for her defense. They watched and supported her in the countless TV interviews when she declared that she did not hurt her son and insisted that she would never take any kind of deal. That’s why many of her supporters were perplexed when, with the jury finally deliberating and the trial racing towards a conclusion, Connie agreed to plead no contest to a single charge of injuring a child. It seemed that neither the defense nor the prosecution were confident of their chances of prevailing, and when the prosecution approached Connie’s attorney with the chance to plead guilty to the lesser charge and go home to her husband and daughter, his advice was that she give it serious consideration. The prosecution was amenable to such a plea because they would save face, avoiding the possible embarrassment of an acquittal.
The following morning, for the first time in months, Connie Towmann woke up without the specter of prison dangling over her head. She sat at the dining room table staring at the newspaper that declared ‘Towmann Cops Plea.’
“Everyone understands honey,” her mother reassured her as she poured two cups of coffee.
“No they don’t Momma. I could see it in their eyes when I walked out of the courthouse. They think I killed Garrett.”
“Honey, if they don’t believe in you then they were never your friends to begin with. You have to think about that little girl of yours playing down the hall. You did the right thing.”
Connie thought for a moment and then nodded in silent agreement. Katie needed her mommy. Connie picked up her coffee mug with a sigh as her mother stood behind her and rubbed her back in as soothing a manner as she could. Down the hall Katie hugged her baby doll, Janie, and sat it on the bed, holding it so that it faced her in a sitting position. Katie’s eyes narrowed, her grip tightened around the doll's neck, her voice lowered to a guttural, feral growl and she began to violently shake the doll.
“When I talk to you, you listen to me or you’re gonna get the same thing I gave Garrett!”