EIGHT

Mark Mangelsdorf was never a man to accept defeat, and it seemed—especially for anyone who had lent him an ear on the subject over the last two decades—unthinkable that he would ever admit guilt. There was nothing to admit to, he’d say. Mention the prospect of a plea, and Mark would respond as if it were absurd.

To a certain degree, Mark, like many in America seeking a better life, was always between skins. By nature Mark was, as his wife unwisely let slip, something of a chameleon. He only appeared steadfast and consistent. Whether Mark dropped religion to fit in better with the corporate establishment, or because he blamed the constricting hold it had on him for that one detonation of emotion, Mark shed a skin he was born in and—as a committed evangelical—reborn into. He went from being devout to, from all practical measures of church attendance, essentially becoming an atheist. He later shed the Midwest, and his college sweetheart, the mother of his first three children. He even shed any trace of his blue-collar existence, leaving every last remnant along the banks of the Mississippi. It did not seem likely that he would ever shed his claims of innocence, which had defined him for so long.

Yet circumstances had come to a serious point for a serious man. Morrison finally obtained Melinda’s agreement to testify against Mark at his trial. In exchange, her jury conviction would be vacated, allowing her to plead guilty to a lesser crime: murder two, or intentional second-degree murder. She could then be sentenced to ten to twenty years in prison, and would be eligible for parole in five years. Kansas had no death penalty in place at the time of David’s murder, but a conviction for first-degree murder meant the potential for life in prison. And Johnson County juries, culled from the area’s conservative religious population, were not known for their leniency. Mark’s life, at least as a free man, was in imminent peril.

By instinct and training, Mark compulsively weighed risk against reward. Like any good graduate of Harvard Business School who went on to hone his business skills at the highest level, this was part of what made him so good in businesses as diverse as carbonated beverages and uniforms, and part of what allowed him to excel in both operational management and sales. It was time for Mark to weigh his options and decide which would work to his best advantage. Nothing, not even a plea deal, was off the table.

It helped that Mark’s lawyer had a gift for making trials go away with pleas. This skill probably surpassed Sherman’s gift at trial. Sherman was always astute in how he presented his case before it even went to trial, prattling on to the cameras and note takers, coloring the perceptions of the jury pool or, perhaps, just striking fear into the prosecution that he had an airtight case and was willing to let a jury decide. When it came to negotiating a plea, Sherman had an uncanny reputation for patience and stick-to-it-ness. When a Stamford, Connecticut, client was faced with forty years for beating a teenager into a vegetative state, Sherman negotiated a plea for four years of jail time, and then argued for even less time at the sentencing. When he was castigated after the court appearance by a reporter who asked how he had the audacity to act in such a fashion, Sherman didn’t respond with fancy word play or righteous indignation.

“It’s the only way,” he said bluntly.

Morrison, no slouch in weighing options to his advantage, had his own concerns. He had won cases with flimsier evidence, but this case he could just as easily lose—one that everyone was watching. Difficult, too, from Morrison’s perspective, Mark’s trial was scheduled for the spring, right at the start of campaign season for the fall election. Trying the case would lose him precious time on the campaign trail, time that a Republican now masquerading as a Democrat could not afford to lose. He had already won a significant victory against Melinda, and an acquittal for Mark would nullify that victory in the eyes of voters. If he lost, he would be chastised for tormenting Olathe all over again. At best, it would color him as a loser just as greater Kansas was getting to know him, a bit like a marathoner getting shot by the starting pistol. There were even rumors that Morrison would not try the case himself. Something—or rather, someone—would have to give.

It began to appear that both sides could benefit from a plea agreement. Morrison’s first offer to Mark amounted to close to twenty years in prison for admitting guilt; this was a non-starter on Mark’s side. In that scenario, Mark would be an old man by the time he got out. That was unworkable.

On Friday, February 10, 2006, Morrison called with an offer that even Sherman considered a good deal. Mark would plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for a sentence of ten to twenty years. Mark would have to admit guilt in open court and, obviously, give up his right to appeal. The intriguing aspect was that, with sentencing guidelines in place at the time, Mark could be eligible for parole in five years. This was a one-time offer, and Sherman would have to answer by Monday or it was off the table permanently.

A restless Mark immediately discussed the matter with Sherman in his Stamford office. Kristina came with him. By now, their second child had been born, a son named Eric.

“What do you think?” Mark asked Sherman.

“It is your time,” answered Sherman. “It has to be your decision.”

Mark and Kristina drove home in a light snow to decide. The storm escalated into a Nor’easter, dumping more than two feet of snow on the New York City suburbs, all but transforming them into what one could imagine a pastoral version of Chili looked like. John Harmon, who was now back in Chili with a fiancée, Regina Lappe, a preacher’s widow he’d known through the church and who had come to his side after Sue died, would not be informed of the plea deal until he returned to Kansas, about to sit for what he thought would be another round of pre-trial hearings.

For Kristina, it was surreal to be left with such an insufferably difficult decision to make, so little time to make it, and, in the end, no hard facts—only their gut instincts—on which to base their decision. After all this time, and all the efforts of their legal staff hammering away on the minutiae of the case, they were left to make a life-altering decision with a simple “yes” or “no.”

Mark, for his part, was better at clinical observation, and the deal looked pretty good to him. He knew Kristina could wait a few years for him—five years was a modest term—to get out, but she couldn’t be expected to wait a space of time that stretched out well into old age.

Kristina always defined Mark by his ability to be considerate to others. She loved to tell the story to friends about how when she was pregnant with their first child, they narrowed their name choice down to either Charlotte or Catherine. Mark wanted Catherine, while Kristina preferred Charlotte. Kristina, who said she always found Mark to be the more giving of the two in their relationship, decided to give Mark the choice. He said they should wait until they saw what the baby looked like, though Kristina naturally assumed Mark would choose Catherine.

When the baby was born, Kristina muttered, “So what does she look like?”

“Charlotte,” Mark responded. He then handed Kristina a Tiffany’s gold locket. Engraved on the back was “I love you, Mommy! Charlotte.” Mark had ordered it weeks before.

Kristina told Mark she needed him with her, eventually. Together, the two MBA graduates did a cost-benefit analysis of their own circumstances—the risk of trial versus the reward of Morrison’s offer. She told him to take the deal. The issue, for her, was practical. To Kristina, Mark was a man undone by circumstance, nothing more. Or less.

Mark was told to fly to Kansas on Sunday so that he could be in court on Monday morning. For the first time since September 11, though, all New York area airports were closed on account of the storm. On Monday, Mark flew from New York, along with Kristina, back to Kansas, back to settle matters for good.

Dean Stelting, now an administrator at a different college in the Nazarene Bible school chain, when asked, angrily defended Mark’s innocence even in light of the plea. But one of his sons, Damon, said he felt crazy for believing Mark, defending him to friends and co-workers in the immediate wake of the plea. Soon, though, he got a seeping sense of doubt, triggered by a nagging memory from back when Mark was staying with them as a teenage boy, of a single flash of anger.

Damon had mowed the Stelting’s modest lawn, as he used to before Mark took up residence there. Mark had been handling chores like that more recently as thanks for their letting him stay. While driving Damon to baseball practice, Mark turned and snapped, “Why did you do that? That’s my job!”

Michael Copeland, the current Mayor of Olathe, called Mark “as gentle and nice a man as I’d ever known.” He had succeeded Mark as student body president of MNC.

Mayor Copeland said that it was inconceivable that his once dear friend, whom he had “totally idolized,” could be involved in anything lacking in grace, much less infused with evil. As a student at MNC, Mayor Copeland confessed that he would drive with friends an hour outside Olathe to crack open beer cans, to get around the campus ban on drinking, but Mark—known as “strong and never wrong”—steadfastly refused. It was clear to all: there was no need to chase the devil from Mark.

In the hectic nights that followed David’s murder, Copeland volunteered to drive home with Mark from nighttime student government meetings because the police tailing him were less apt to pull Mark over and harass him with a witness in the car.

Copeland was elected to the office of mayor in 2001. He said that on one of his first nights in office, he was riding in a police cruiser and leaned over to the front seat to ask the patrolmen if they knew anything about the David Harmon murder.

After Melinda’s arrest, however, the questions came in the other direction when the Olathe News quoted Mayor Copeland saying that he was not surprised at the turn in events. This elicited a prompt call from Detective Wall, who delved into the exact meaning of his quote. Was the mayor actually implying, Wall asked, that he knew something? Mayor Copeland said that his quote had been taken out of context.

For Kristina, there was no question of Mark’s innocence. “A leopard does not change its spots,” she said. David Penrose, the psychologist for the criminally insane, who grew up and attended college with Mark in the same puritanical environment, also used a predatory animal metaphor.

“You let the lion out of the cage and then you try to get it back in,” he said. Which is, of course, part of the story’s end. Mark managed to put the lion back. And keep him locked up. This was not a crime committed at a distance, but close-up, one that sent a man’s eyeball flying across the room. And while it was partially a crime of passion, he had planned it for months, lying in wait with a crowbar in his possession for a full week. But the lion was, forever afterward, caged and gentle.

Mark wore a dark suit, a starched white shirt, and a funereal black striped tie to his February 13 guilty plea, nearly twenty-three years to the day after David was murdered. The fashion choice was quite a departure from the more traditional corporate red power tie he sported when he testified for the defense the previous spring at Melinda’s trial and had refused, even when pressed, to utter the word “liar.”

Morrison rose to speak, to give a public account of the murder and all of the suspicious behavior by Mark and Melinda leading up to it. Mark sat attentive at the defense table as all the years of conjecture, myth, and wild guessing were about to finally give way to an airing of the truth. Kristina was once again sitting in the front row, as she had during Mark’s testimony, their children back in storm-hit New York with a babysitter. She cried throughout the proceedings.

Though he was pleading guilty and thus no longer asking for vindication, Mark was still angling for the deal most advantageous to him. Sherman argued that while Mark was agreeing to plead guilty to the crime, he was not signing off on every aspect of Melinda’s version of events. By agreeing in principle to Melinda’s statement of events, while not making a formal statement himself, Mark was effectively carving himself some wiggle room by implying that there were alternative explanations, or that he just might be getting forced into the plea by circumstance. And Mark, to be certain, offered no alternative explanation of David’s murder. His caveat merely raised doubts, however subtly, about Melinda’s story without correcting a single item of it.

Morrison rose to read Melinda’s statement in open court. Between that and all the testimony and remembrances of those involved, the veil of the past could finally be pulled back.

Mark and Melinda became friends through contact at the dean’s office. Mark was a man headed places, but inexperienced with women. Melinda was desirable and flirtatious, experienced but looking for someone new. A friendship blossomed and quickly deepened. By sometime in 1981, there were stolen kisses and perhaps there was nothing more salacious than that. Melinda introduced Mark to David and they became friends. When the couple went away and Mark stayed in their house to house-sit, he would count the condoms and admonish Melinda when some had been used.

Whatever the strange alchemy between them, Melinda was happier when Mark was around. God’s love was strong, but this was stronger. For Mark, the headiness of this attention from an older woman, a fellow churchgoer—but one of such high stature and carnal knowledge—was all but unmanageable. He broke up with his girlfriend, with whom he had never even tried to have sex. Then he broke his lease and rented a place across town to be closer to Melinda.

Mark began to lament to Melinda that they had not met before she was married. Divorce was heresy, but on a lark Mark began talking about how nice it would be if Melinda was not married. He soon brought up the prospect of unhitching the brakes on David’s car.

He decided against that idea, and weighed the relative strengths and weaknesses of other options, considering the situation tactically. Then, after Revival Week, he told Melinda that he had purchased a crowbar and “the time was coming.”

Aware of Mark’s plans, Melinda compared widowhood to divorce. She landed far enough on the side of widowhood to not warn David what was afoot. And to leave the sliding glass door unlocked. And to rise from the bed on the night of February 28, 1982, as a shadowy figure in a homemade cloth mask entered her bedroom. Melinda watched from a distance as the attack started before running downstairs to the living room.

Mark stood on the far side of the bed, nearest the bedroom door. David was lying on the side of the bed closest to the wall, which meant Mark was looking down at David’s face as he brought the crowbar down with all the force he could muster. His arms were fully extended for the most destructive leverage.

There is no telling which of the dozen or so blows killed David. A precise count was unknown because of the nature of the injuries. There were no neat bullet holes or knife wounds to tally. Did the first strike of the crowbar kill David instantly? That could very well be—there were no defensive wounds of any kind. Or it could have been one of the next twelve blows to David’s head, none of which were delivered sparingly. Rather than hesitating at any point, Mark was apparently invigorated, a soul wholly consumed.

One blow carried over to the next. When he missed David’s shattered skull, his blows struck and crushed David’s neck. The bones in David’s nose and cheeks were pulverized, caving in his now formless face toward the pillow. One of David’s eyeballs was ripped from its socket, landing on the light brown wall-to-wall carpeting. Blood and brain matter sprayed everywhere—against the white wall behind the bed, the drab brown curtains beside it, onto the dried flowers in the glass jar with marbles sitting on the night table, and into one of the night table’s open drawers. The painted wicker light shade that hung from the ceiling was sopping wet with blood, as was the flowered quilt and the flowered yellow bed sheets, including the area where Melinda claimed she had been sleeping when the attack began. A rush of blood and brain had even splattered behind Mark, landing in the hallway that led to the bedroom.

When he was done, Mark went downstairs to find Melinda. The bottom hem of her nightgown was blood spattered from the few moments she spent watching Mark swinging the crowbar at her husband’s skull. She asked Mark if he was sure David was dead. Mark went back to David’s bedside with the crowbar and struck him again, pummeling a now lifeless body.

Returning to the living room, Mark and Melinda staged the mock robbery, taking the top to the key dish jar and placing it on the floor. Then Mark, as per the plan, lightly struck Melinda, barely enough to bruise her. She then, before going to the neighbor’s for help, waited the agreed upon period of time to give Mark enough opportunity to clean up. Melinda covered David up, tucking him in with a final act of perverse tenderness, then ran next door to the Bergstrands, reciting the prepared story about the black assailants, the version that somehow held sway for over twenty years.

A final, macabre note—at David’s funeral, when Mark whispered into Melinda’s ear, virtually the entire town (including the police) wondered what he had said to her. Mark calmly told Melinda that he had gotten rid of the crowbar.

Mark pled guilty to a charge of second-degree murder with a few attentive “Yes, sirs,” to the judge. Under normal circumstances, an admitted murderer would be remanded to custody and taken out a side door to the Johnson County Jail, where he would await sentencing, then assignment in the state jail system. With Mickey Sherman on his side, though, Mark was given ninety days after his plea to get his affairs in order, a highly unusual arrangement, but one for which Sherman, in all his negotiating glory, had pushed. Mark walked out of the courthouse, squinting in the white light of the day’s late winter sun, his gaze even more piercing, though when he spoke to the mob of cameras and notepads, he sounded nonplussed.

He explained the decision to change his plea, to reverse years of claims of his innocence, in the calculating words of a business transaction. “We considered it recently,” he said. “It was time for me to plead guilty. Thought it was the best way to move forward and get things behind us.”

Kristina still held Mark out as the perfect soul he had strived to be. “He’s the best husband and father he could be,” she said.

“I’m interested in serving the time as soon as possible so that my family and I can get on with the rest of our lives,” said Mark to the trailing cameras and notepads.

John Harmon, in just an afterthought that day, told those same cameras and notepads—anyone who would listen, really—that he felt a measure of relief, but mostly sadness. Mark, he said, was speaking of his penance like an “appointment.” John had prayed for Mark over the year, but with a mindset like that, how would moral regeneration ever occur, with or without the power of prayer?

There are always letdowns after long waits, but this was different. John’s base instinct that the deal offered to Mark was a blessing had suddenly given way to an emerging reality. He was learning yet again that nothing would bring David back.