In court, Frank’s lawyers argued that Frank himself had been the victim in a long series of terribly unfortunate events. Far from trying, and failing, to orchestrate his wife’s murder, he’d found himself caught in a blackmailing scheme. Way back in 2009, they argued, Billie Earl Johnson had found out about Frank’s affair with Suzanne Leontieff. Billie had tried to blackmail him over it. Heck, Billie had blackmailed Frank, to the tune of hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars. He’d bled Frank dry in exchange for his silence. Then, when Frank finally stopped paying, Billie had taken his revenge and hired an accomplice to shoot Nancy Howard.
It was a good story, Frank thought. Nancy herself was disgusted.
And then their children—Ashley, Jay, and Brianna—stood up to take their places in the witness stand.
Frank had his failings; it was true. All three of his children had learned that by now. Hearing about his affair had shocked, even shattered, them—if they hadn’t known their own father, what did they know?
What could they be sure of?
The answer turned out to be simple: The children were sure of Frank’s innocence—they had to be—because if Frank was guilty, their world no longer made sense. And so, one by one, they testified in his favor.
“My family foundation is built on God, faith, and grace,” Jay said, turning all the way in the witness chair to face the jury. “Since Jesus has given me grace, I ask that you do the same for my father.”
Brianna called him a “great man,” spoke about how much she loved him and how he’d been there for her for all twenty-three years of her life.
Ashley took a more pragmatic approach. Frank had always been there for the family, she said, even during these last two years since his arrest. His alimony checks for Nancy never came late. In fact, he was still Nancy’s main source of income. “What benefit is there to putting him away?” she asked.
* * *
Suzanne Leontieff took the stand, too, during the first week of the trial. It was the first time that Frank had seen her in almost two years. She told the jury she really had loved Frank, and really had expected him to leave Nancy for her. She’d planned out their whole life together—although, Suzanne had to admit, she’d gotten fed up toward the end with Frank’s endless excuses. But she also knew in her heart that Frank was a good husband. She described the way he’d collapsed, sobbing, after learning that Nancy had been shot.
There was no way Suzanne could have imagined that Frank was involved in the attempted murder.
Frank had mixed feelings about Suzanne’s testimony. It did nothing to cement the idea that he was a committed family man. He wished the woman wouldn’t giggle so much. It was unseemly, given the circumstances. But Frank wasn’t on trial for the affair—a fact that his lawyers had stressed repeatedly in their opening address to the jury—and, overall, he guessed that Suzanne had done more to help than to harm him.
That was something he could not have said about other witnesses called by the prosecution.
Sober now, after a long stint in prison, Billie Earl Johnson was more coherent than Frank had ever seen him be out in the world. Up on the witness stand, he put on a real performance. And, even Frank had to admit, his testimony did extreme damage to the argument Frank’s defense lawyers had set out to make.