Mary's Mosaic by Peter Janney

over the victim at the scene.  
   Hantman:  
  According to your best recollection, Mr. Wiggins, are these the same ones or do they look like the articles you saw on the man bending over the body of Mary Pinchot Meyer?  
   Wiggins:  
  They are the same articles which I saw.    43
    Again, the exchange was not lost on the defense. Wiggins had unintentionally started to dig his own grave. Dovey Roundtree would merely gave him a bigger shovel to dig deeper.
     
   Roundtree:  
  Do you remember, Mr. Witness, that you also said you had only a glimpse of the person you saw at the scene?  
   Wiggins:  
  I remember that.  
   Roundtree:  
  This morning nevertheless, Mr. Witness, you are prepared to tell this court and this jury that these are the pants?  
   Wiggins:  
  That’s right.  
   Roundtree:  
  Positively?  
   Wiggins:  
  Positive.  
   Roundtree:  
  You are prepared to say that this is the cap?  
   Wiggins:  
  That is the cap.  
   Roundtree:  
  And that these are the black shoes?  
   Wiggins:  
  That is right.  
   Roundtree:  
  And that this is the jacket?  
   Wiggins:  
  That is right.    44
    Wiggins had already identified Ray Crump as the man he saw standing over the victim. Roundtree used this opportunity to highlight the discrepancy between what Wiggins had reported to the police and the actual size of the defendant.
     
   Roundtree:  
  Would that, then, be an accurate estimate of what you saw, the man you saw weighed 185 and was five feet eight?  
   Wiggins:  
  That wouldn’t be an accurate estimate, no, ma’am.  
    Roundtree turned to face the jury.
     
   Roundtree:  
  Well, now, are you telling us you gave them [the police] information which was not accurate?  
   Wiggins:  
  Well, this information which I gave them at that time which I was looking across the canal down on the subject there, would not be very accurate but as close as I can give. I give it to them as close as I could remember.  
   Roundtree:  
  And you gave them, though, what you thought you saw from across the canal?  
   Wiggins:  
  I tried to do my best.  
   Roundtree:  
  All right. A hundred and eighty-five pounds; five feet eight.  
   Wiggins:  
  That’s right.    45
    If Wiggins was beginning to squirm, the increasingly exasperated, gumchewing Hantman had to have been agitated. His star eyewitness, and his case, were crumbling on the second day of the trial. During his redirect, Hantman asked Wiggins again whether his view of the murder scene had been obstructed in any way. Wiggins reiterated that nothing had blocked his view. Yet Wiggins had contradicted his own testimony. Hantman had opened a problematic door. Dovey Roundtree merely walked Wiggins through it. Seeking to bolster Wiggins’s credibility regarding Crump’s clothing, Hantman had attempted something similar with Wiggins’s description of the suspect’s height and weight—both of which in no way matched Crump’s. Inadvertently, Hantman had damaged the credibility of his star eyewitness so badly that his case would never recover. The description Wiggins had given police just minutes after the murder took place—”five feet eight, medium build, 185 pounds”—would be reiterated by nearly every one of the twelve policemen and detectives called to testify at the trial, except for two who remembered the height as “five feet ten inches.” This was the description, they all testified, of the man they were told to look for, and it didn’t come close to describing the defendant. Ray Crump shared just one physical feature with the man described on the police radio broadcast on the day of the murder: He was black.
    By midmorning of day two, the defense strategy of reasonable doubt had started a crusade. With nearly each of the prosecution’s twenty-seven witnesses,