Canyon of secrets

Cody Posey: I wanted a family. Sir, I wanted to please everybody that I could to make a family.  I wanted to be the kid that my dad said, “You know what, look, that’s my son.”

But now it was it was time for Cody to explain why he’d killed him, along with his stepmother and stepsister.

But what no one knew as he took the stand was how many more secrets were about to spill out— dark sexual stories at the heart of Cody’s case that no one had heard, which would rock the courtroom and the community.

But first, Cody calmly described a list of physical abuse.

Cody Posey (in court):  When I was a younger child and had loose teeth, I would mess with them and wiggle ‘em around. My father pops me hit me in the jaw to knock my tooth out.  And he said, “There, now you’ll stop playing with it.”

Gary Mitchell, defense lawyer: How were wakened up in those days?

Cody Posey: I got shocked with a hot shot which is an electronic cattle prod.

The defense never disputed that Cody gunned down his family.  But it wanted the jury to understand why... what happened to Cody in the days, the months and years that led up to that terrible morning.

In a flat, emotionless voice he described his life as a boy—emotionless until he got to his mother’s death.

Cody Posey: They took me away from my mother as I was trying to help her.  And they put me in the back of the ambulance. And I remember going to a hospital, sir.  I asked many times if she was okay. And doctors said she would be fine. Before I went to bed that night a doctor came in and told me that she didn’t make it.

The defense wanted the jury to know how much Cody feared his dad. They called witnesses who described how he reacted at his mother’s funeral when he learned he would have to go back to live with his father:

Courtney Taylor: He was devastated. He was crying like nothing you’d ever seen before, it was almost like a horror movie.

A science teacher described a disturbing parent-teacher conference:

Science teacher: They were screaming and hollering and carrying on, both of them at the same time. Cody began sobbing and I was in shock. And Paul said, “You’re gonna get it when we get home.” He says, “You know what’s going to happen when we get home.”

By law, teachers are required to report abuse, but Cody’s teachers’ said, at the time, they didn’t think it was abuse. But the defense called others who said abuse was very much on their minds, beginning with the cowboys who worked on the ranch. They backed up Cody’s stories. Remember Slim?  He described an incident with an iron hook used for lifting hay.

Slim Brittan: He’d go like this (Slim gestures with hook) and that’s when Paul would reach over and hit him across the hand or hit him on the hand.

And how Paul beat Cody with a rope.

Brittan: You take one of these and if you hit someone with it across the back like that (slim gestures again) it really hurts.

In all, the defense called three dozen witnesses, including Pilo Vasquez who still works on the Donaldson ranch.

Prosecution: Did he strike him both on the chest and on the shoulder?

(Pilo Vasquez motions to his stomach and chest to show where Paul hit Cody)

Translator: First here and then here.

But then the defense began exploring the family’s darkest secrets, suggesting that Cody’s father had forced all of them down a forbidden road.

Defense lawyer: Can you tell us what we’re looking at?

Computer expert: The remains of an AOL search. The keywords are “free incest stories”

Defense lawyer: Does that have a particular relevance as to whether or not someone was intentionally searching for incestual?

Computer expert: Yes, those are the actual words they typed in.

In disturbing testimony, the computer expert told how the computer in the father’s office proved someone was often interested in incest.

Defense lawyer:  And was there incestuous pornography found on the hits in which you found the words ‘son’ and ‘wife’ and ‘daughter’ as well?

Computer expert: Yes.

Not the word, “sister”... but “daughter.”

Defense lawyer: Is this a compilation (witness is holding a large binder) of all the images found on the hard drive whenever you searched the words incest and daughter?

Computer expert: Uh…  yes.

Then the defense went to the heart of its case— what happened the night before the killings that put the 14-year-old  over the edge. A sexually explicit story involving his father and stepmother that only came out in his confession when the male detective left Cody with the female officer.

Cody Posey (tape): My dad and her would like, would have sex, or something like that and they were trying to do something to me.  She grabbed my head and put it on her breast.  That’s how I got these burns.  He had a hot torch thing, like a welding rod, and he told me he was going to burn me if I didn’t do it.

He would say even more in the courtroom.

Cody Posey (in court): As I stood at the front of the bed, Tryone—pulled down the covers and she was laying there completely naked.  My dad striked up the torch and told me that I was gonna have sex with Tryone. I refused to do it.  Told him I wasn’t gonna do it.  And as I was telling him I wasn’t gonna do it, he was heating up this rod.

As he burned me he told me to do it again and I said no.  I remember Tryone scooting down the bed—to the foot of the bed.  She grabbed my head, put it into her breast.  And at that time to make her let go of me, I remember biting her.  As I bit her I got burned another time with the rod.

The defense attorney argued it was sexual abuse that triggered the killings— that Cody felt his life had gone in such a frightening direction that there was no way out.

Gary Mitchell, defense attorney: it was a culminating factor. I expect at that point in time the child realized, wait a second, this has gone to an altogether different level.

The incest testimony was provocative, but still didn’t answer the question: Why did Cody shoot his stepsister, Marilea? The defense had an explanation for that:

Mitchell: This was a situation in which he reacted to the three of them and what had been happening to him all his life.  And that, as a child, he’s unable to discriminate and distinguish between the three actors.

In the end, the defense knew the jury would still be weighing “the why?” Why did Cody start shooting?

Mitchell:  So what happened to you, Cody?  What happened to you that morning?

Cody Posey:  I just, I lost control, sir.  I didn’t know what I was thinking.  I didn’t know what I was doing.

The case would soon go to the jury. Their verdict would be only the beginning of a surprise conclusion to this trial.

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