Looking at Ethan on the witness stand, I was able to see how much he had changed in the six months since his arrest. His chest and shoulders were broader, and his voice was lower. Now that his face was more defined, his chin and jawline were just like Adam’s. He wasn’t quite an adult, but nothing about him looked boyish anymore.
Nicky and I knew Olivia had spent hours with Ethan, preparing him to testify, but we had no idea what he would actually say. We wanted to believe that Olivia was putting Ethan on the stand because his innocence would be obvious to the jury once they heard his side of the story. But more likely she was doing it because she believed he’d be convicted unless he gave it a shot.
He grew more comfortable speaking in the courtroom as Olivia posed a series of basic questions about where he was born, when he moved to New York, where he lived, and other background information. Once he seemed at ease, she walked him through his time line for the night of the murder. For the most part, his version lined up with Kevin Dunham’s. They were together all night except for a one-hour window. The only variation was the reason for the separation. Kevin had testified that Ethan was supposed to meet someone on the beach to sell some pot, while Ethan claimed he had asked to be left at the beach while Kevin finished a deal.
Olivia showed Ethan a list of the items we had reported stolen from the house after Adam’s murder, and then showed him a matching list of the items seized from the top shelf of his bedroom closet in the city. “Now, are the three items from your closet the same things that were reported missing from your house?”
“Yes.”
“And how did those items come to be on your top shelf?”
“I put them there.”
“Do you remember when you put them there?”
“Yes. It was Saturday night.”
“Which Saturday was that?” she asked.
“Sorry. The night after my dad was killed. Mom and I drove back to the city that afternoon.”
Olivia stated the exact date in May to clarify, which Ethan confirmed.
“Were you in possession of those three items when you left East Hampton and went to the city that afternoon?” Olivia asked.
“No.”
“So where were those items immediately before you put them on the top shelf in your closet?”
“In my bedroom.”
“Which bedroom?”
“Sorry, my bedroom in the city.”
“Please explain why you placed those items in your closet.”
“Mom had gone to bed, and I knew there was no way I was going to fall asleep. I kept thinking, He’s never coming back, he’s never coming back. Even now, it seems hard to believe, but that first night was . . . really hard. And I was looking around my room, thinking about all the times I didn’t listen to him. And disappointed him.” His face wrinkled, and I could tell he was fighting back the urge to cry. “He was always telling me my room was a pigsty . . . if pigs hoarded overpriced clothes,” he added with a sad smile. “So I started cleaning up my room. And I found the stuff we told the police was missing.”
Olivia showed him a photograph of his bedroom, printed from a still shot of the video the jury had already seen when he was arguing with Adam. She then showed him a photograph that the police had taken of his bedroom during a search of our apartment on the day he was arrested. It was clear that his room was cleaner in the second image.
“So why did you put those items in the closet instead of, for example, telling your stepmother you had found them?”
Ethan looked down, appearing ashamed, and then gazed up again. “I figured they had already been reported stolen anyway, so I might as well keep them. It was stupid. And wrong.”
“So why did you do it?”
“I was scared. I had seen how much more money we had recently, and I thought it was because Dad was working at a law firm. I was afraid we were going to be broke and figured some insurance company wouldn’t miss a couple thousand dollars. I was going to sell the stuff if we ever needed money.”
It was a plausible explanation. The jury didn’t know, however, what I knew. Ethan had asked me to go to Kevin’s on Saturday afternoon for his backpack, but later that night, the backpack was empty except for a burner phone.
He also had an explanation for secretly videotaping Adam in his room. “He was just so disappointed in me—making it sound like I was a really bad kid. I mean, I’m not perfect. I could follow every piece of advice he ever gave me, and I’d never be first in my class or the ninety-ninth percentile like him and my mom.”
“Just to be clear for the jury, you mean your stepmother, Chloe Taylor, correct?”
He nodded and then said “Yes” for the court reporter. “Yeah, but I call her Mom. I mean, she’s always accepted the way I am, but Dad was really upset that I wasn’t more like them. He was making it sound like I was going off the deep end. And, yes, he was even talking about sending me away to military school. So I recorded him. I was thinking it would be like an intervention or something—like when that girl put up an Insta story about her dad getting wasted all night. But I wasn’t going to go public or anything. I was just going to show him that he was the one who was acting crazy when we argued. I was normal. I am normal. And now I feel like the police are treating me like I’m some horrible kid, too.”
When he wiped his face with his palms, he momentarily looked like a child again.
“So did you ever show that video to your father?”
He shook his head.
“You need to answer aloud,” she reminded him.
“No. I felt too bad about it. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.” His face pruned again, and this time he couldn’t stop the tears. He sniffed a few times and ran the sleeve of his suit jacket across his eyes, regaining his composure.
“There’s one more thing I need to talk to you about, Ethan. You said before that you refer to your stepmother, Chloe Taylor, as Mom. Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Are you proud of her?”
“Very. I mean, look at everything she’s done.”
“Did you write those posts on the Poppit website about her, under the name KurtLoMein?”
He looked at me with pain in his eyes as he answered quietly. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s just . . . everything was changing. She always worked hard, but then she got sort of famous because of her magazine. Then when the Them Too stuff blew up, she was like a hero to people. She was busy all the time, and even when she was home, she was writing in her office or looking at her social. I think—”
“You mean social media?” Olivia clarified.
“Yeah. Like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Dad would tell her she was worse than a teenager, and she’d say he didn’t understand the pressure she was under. That she had twenty-five-year-olds nipping at her heels who’d steal her job the second she fell behind the digital trend.” The eyes of several jurors moved in my direction. It was clear that no sixteen-year-old would have come up with that sentence unless he’d heard it repeatedly from an adult. “I think I was hoping to get her attention, because I knew she read what people were saying about her online.”
“Finally, Ethan, just to be clear: Did you go to your house any time after Kevin picked you up on Friday night, or before you returned with your mother on Saturday morning?”
“No.”
“Did you kill your father, Adam Macintosh?”
“No, I swear.”
“I have no further questions, Your Honor.”
If Ethan’s direct examination had earned him any sympathy at all, it had not worked with ADA Nunzio. He stood only two feet from the witness chair, his voice bellowing with skepticism and indignation. He had purposely positioned himself to obscure Ethan’s view of Olivia and therefore also Nicky and me, who were seated behind her.
He poked tiny holes in every aspect of Ethan’s testimony. On the time line, he prodded Ethan to account for the hour he had been alone on the beach, making it sound nearly impossible that a teenage boy could spend an hour of solitude without sending a single text or social media post. On the marijuana, he asked question after question about the price of Ethan’s various possessions, arguing that he, not Kevin, must have been the one selling pot. On the items seized from the top shelf of his closet, he ridiculed the idea that a kid of Ethan’s means would believe that a few used luxuries could make a dent in the household budget.
Through it all, Olivia made repeated objections—hearsay, relevance, vagueness, speculation—until Nunzio finally accused her of trying to break up any rhythm he had for the cross-examination.
“I won’t speculate on an attorney’s motives,” Judge Rivera said, “but I share his concern, Ms. Randall. You know how a trial works. It’s his turn to ask questions.”
As Nunzio’s momentum built, so did his aggression. “Isn’t it true that you took those items to falsely stage a burglary after you killed your father so he would not send you away to military school?”
“No, that is not true!”
“In fact, isn’t that why you posted such hateful things about your stepmother? The woman who had always coddled you, apologized for you, made excuses for you—even after you brought a gun to school—was suddenly too busy to get your back.”
Ethan was shaking his head, saying “No” over and over again, while Olivia objected that Nunzio was badgering the witness. Stop, I was thinking. Please, someone, just make it stop.
Nunzio began to read from the Poppit posts. “She’s weak, you said. A hypocrite. A coward. Cares more about her picture-perfect image than actual reality. You said those things because Chloe Taylor was no longer protecting you from your father’s discipline, and so you took matters into your own hands.”
“Your Honor, Mr. Nunzio is abusing this witness.”
Just as the judge was overruling the objection, Ethan slammed his hands down on the railing in front of him. “You’re twisting it all around. I was just trying to get her attention. All I meant is that she was more worried about what other people thought of her than what was going on in our own house!”
“And what was going on in your own house is that your father was finally done allowing you to set your own rules, isn’t that right?”
“No.”
“And when you could no longer get your way, all the time, you decided to kill him, didn’t you?”
“No!”
“Is that why you were carrying that gun in your backpack? Had you been planning before to shoot him?”
Olivia, the judge, and Ethan were all speaking at once. “No foundation, Your Honor.” “Overruled.” “What? No, are you kidding?”
“Is that why your father got rid of the gun? To protect himself from you?”
“Jesus, no! He was beating the shit out of her, okay? And she let him do it, and that’s why I recorded him.”
I heard someone gasp behind me as Nicky placed her hand on my knee and gave it a tight squeeze.
“Your Honor—”
The judge held up a hand and shot Olivia a stern look that sent her back into her chair.
“Is that why you stabbed your father?” Nunzio demanded. “To protect your stepmother because he was abusing her?”
Ethan leaned back in his chair and looked down at his lap. “No,” he mumbled. “I swear, I didn’t do it, but maybe I should have.”
Olivia asked calmly for a recess, but Judge Rivera ordered her to ask her questions or waive her right to redirect. She rose as if she were completely prepared for the moment.
“Ethan, I know the prosecutor wants to make this seem like a big dramatic discovery—”
Nunzio wasn’t even out of his chair before Rivera admonished Olivia to avoid unnecessary commentary.
“Very well. Just to be clear, though, when you spoke to Detective Guidry the morning after your father died, did she ask you whether there was any acrimony between your father and stepmother?”
“No.” He was still rattled, but his voice was calm and level.
“Did she ask whether your father was violent toward your stepmother?”
“No.”
“It was pretty clear that you didn’t want that known, in fact. Is that right?”
He nodded, and then added “Yes” for the record.
“All right. But now that it’s out there, you saw your father, Adam Macintosh, use violence against your stepmother, Chloe Taylor?” Olivia deserved an Academy Award for acting as if this was all old news to her—a mere distraction by the prosecution—but I was absolutely certain this was the first she had heard of it.
“No, I didn’t actually see it happening. But I could hear it. They think when I’m in my room, all I do is listen to my Beats, and it’s like I’m not there. But I could tell when there was tension. I’d listen when they were fighting. I was afraid they’d get divorced, because Chloe’s basically my mom, and I didn’t know what would happen if they split up. And some of the fights were . . . bad, really bad, like I could hear thuds and stuff. And then a few times, it was clear he was hurting her.”
I realized I was biting my lower lip so hard I had drawn blood. The metallic taste was the same as the one time Adam punched me in the face with a closed fist. When people saw the bruise on my cheek and the cut on my mouth, I told them, “Can you believe I actually walked into a wall? Adam says I need a better cover story, or the police are going to come for him.” And then everyone would laugh.
“How could you tell he was hurting Chloe, Ethan?”
“Because she’d literally be screaming, ‘Adam, you’re hurting me.’ But when he got mad, you couldn’t get him to stop. And that’s why I taped him. I couldn’t figure out a good way to tape him hurting her, so I decided to record him yelling at me, so he’d at least see how crazy he got when he was angry.”
“And to be clear, did your father ever hit you?”
“No.”
“And does any of this have anything whatsoever to do with your father’s murder?”
“No, because I didn’t do it.”
“And why didn’t you tell anyone earlier about your father’s violence toward your stepmother?”
“Because she obviously didn’t want anyone to know, or else she would have done something.”
Just like KurtLoMein said, I was weak. A coward. A hypocrite. I was just like my mother.