Chapter Forty-One: First Day of the Trial
February 24, 1959
The door at the back of Ventura Superior Courtroom One swung open and a smiling, confident Elizabeth Duncan sashayed in like she owned the place. Her grand entrance was hindered only by the fact that she was cuffed to Mary Fogarty, a Ventura County deputy sheriff. Mrs. Duncan nodded and raised her fingertips to a few familiar faces in the press crowd that she’d come to know during the week-long jury selection process.
Reporters and photographers swarmed. “How about a few pictures before we start?” one of the newsmen called out. Mrs. Duncan’s dapper little attorney, Ward Sullivan, nodded his permission and then continued a conversation with his private investigator.
Deputy Fogarty, dressed in a brown skirt and jacket with a sheriff’s star pinned on the front, unfastened the handcuffs. Mrs. Duncan stood next to her chair at the defense table and rubbed her wrist before turning toward the reporters. “Do you like my new outfit?” she asked as she fluffed the skirt of her two-piece, black and white dress with a Peter Pan-style, velveteen-trimmed collar. “Frank bought it for me.” Flashbulbs popped.
The dark, mahogany-paneled courtroom, with its gleaming coffered ceilings, arched windows and three beautiful stained-glass domed skylights, had been built as a public works project at the turn of the century. The judge sat at a raised desk at the front of the courtroom called the bench. The defense and prosecution tables faced the judge, with the witness stand and jury box to one side. Because of the large number of journalists covering the trial, a makeshift press section had been set up behind the counsel tables, inside the low wooden railing, called the bar, that separated the judge, jury, lawyers, and defendant from the ninety-eight-seat spectator gallery.
On most days the atmosphere in Courtroom One was almost church like. People instinctively lowered their voices as they entered, but on the opening day of the Duncan trial, an electric excitement had spread throughout the building. Newsmen from all over the country had descended on Ventura. Representatives of the wire services, national news magazines, photographers and reporters from all the major newspapers in the state, about 30 journalists in all, had assembled in the press section to await the beginning of the trial.