realized it was more than
that. I’d set out to make Judith a character in my story, and
instead I’d become a character in hers.
Fifteen
On January 30, 2012, Judith Wright
Patterson finally got her day in court. She and her lawyer Seth
Nichamoff appeared before Judge Larry Weiman of the 80th District
Court in Harris County, encompassing Houston. By this point, the
defendants in the case had been whittled down to Ethel Louise
Williams and Rick Harris. Although she still suspected many of her
other relatives were involved, she’d dropped her accusations
against them after her half-sister Diana had fought the case with
attorneys of her own.
Neither Rick nor Louise had ever hired a lawyer to defend
themselves, nor did they show up that day for the court appearance.
Even so, the judge proceeded to rule against Judith. Whatever her
relatives might have done to M. A. Wright, she hadn’t proven that
they’d stolen from her, and they didn’t owe her anything as a
result. And that was it.
I was relieved to find that Judith considered the verdict final
and, oddly, something of a victory. Even if the judge hadn’t
ultimately ruled in her favor, she told me when I talked to her
just after her court date, his comments in open court had persuaded
her that he believed M. A. Wright was defrauded. He just didn’t
believe there was enough evidence that she had been. Her decades of
legal battles were over, and she’d lost nearly all of them. She
would never see a dollar from Wright’s family or her mother’s.
Later, Nichamoff admitted to me that while he had hoped for a
different outcome, he knew they’d never truly tied together the
story’s loose ends in a way that would satisfy the judge. “Did they
take property that specifically belonged to Judith?” he told me.
“We just don’t have any evidence of that. We never did.
“My guess,” he went on, “at the end of the day, did these people
extort money from Myron Wright? Yeah, it did happen. Absolutely,
there is no doubt. But then what? These are people living in
trailer parks. There is no honor and no victory, morally, legally,
or financially, in making people’s lives more miserable than they
already are.”
Sixteen
My conversations with Judith tapered off
after the verdict, but a year later, in early 2013, I decided to go
back to see her. I flew first to Tulsa and spent a few days driving
around town, looking for the landmarks that had figured into
Louise’s account of her affair with M. A. Wright. The Dutchman’s
steak house where she’d worked is now a small strip mall anchored
by an out-of-season Halloween store. The Adams Hotel, where she’d
first left Wright and later lived for several months as a kept
woman, still has its ornate art deco exterior, but it has long
since been transformed into an office building, with a Mexican
restaurant on the ground floor.
The Mayo, next door, fell into disrepair in the 1980s, but it
recently came under new ownership and has been restored to
something approaching its original glory. It now houses a small
museum dedicated to its history, and I wandered through it, past
the photos of the celebrities and politicians who’d stayed there in
its heyday: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Marilyn Monroe, and
Elvis Presley. I stood atop the steps where Louise remembered
standing when M. A. Wright told her that she’d never see him
again.
On the other side of town I stopped in on Terry Funk, the lawyer
who had represented Judith in her first lawsuit back in 1994.
Judith had filed an ethics complaint against him, but they’d
halfway reconciled, and she still called him occasionally to fill
him in on the case’s progress. It was like that with Judith.
Funk, wearing a white button-down monogrammed with his initials,
genially welcomed me into his glassed-in high-rise office. I sat
across from him at his desk and pressed him to remember what he
could of the case in which he had once been embroiled. “She had
that. I’d set out to make Judith a character in my story, and
instead I’d become a character in hers.
Fifteen
On January 30, 2012, Judith Wright
Patterson finally got her day in court. She and her lawyer Seth
Nichamoff appeared before Judge Larry Weiman of the 80th District
Court in Harris County, encompassing Houston. By this point, the
defendants in the case had been whittled down to Ethel Louise
Williams and Rick Harris. Although she still suspected many of her
other relatives were involved, she’d dropped her accusations
against them after her half-sister Diana had fought the case with
attorneys of her own.
Neither Rick nor Louise had ever hired a lawyer to defend
themselves, nor did they show up that day for the court appearance.
Even so, the judge proceeded to rule against Judith. Whatever her
relatives might have done to M. A. Wright, she hadn’t proven that
they’d stolen from her, and they didn’t owe her anything as a
result. And that was it.
I was relieved to find that Judith considered the verdict final
and, oddly, something of a victory. Even if the judge hadn’t
ultimately ruled in her favor, she told me when I talked to her
just after her court date, his comments in open court had persuaded
her that he believed M. A. Wright was defrauded. He just didn’t
believe there was enough evidence that she had been. Her decades of
legal battles were over, and she’d lost nearly all of them. She
would never see a dollar from Wright’s family or her mother’s.
Later, Nichamoff admitted to me that while he had hoped for a
different outcome, he knew they’d never truly tied together the
story’s loose ends in a way that would satisfy the judge. “Did they
take property that specifically belonged to Judith?” he told me.
“We just don’t have any evidence of that. We never did.
“My guess,” he went on, “at the end of the day, did these people
extort money from Myron Wright? Yeah, it did happen. Absolutely,
there is no doubt. But then what? These are people living in
trailer parks. There is no honor and no victory, morally, legally,
or financially, in making people’s lives more miserable than they
already are.”
Sixteen
My conversations with Judith tapered off
after the verdict, but a year later, in early 2013, I decided to go
back to see her. I flew first to Tulsa and spent a few days driving
around town, looking for the landmarks that had figured into
Louise’s account of her affair with M. A. Wright. The Dutchman’s
steak house where she’d worked is now a small strip mall anchored
by an out-of-season Halloween store. The Adams Hotel, where she’d
first left Wright and later lived for several months as a kept
woman, still has its ornate art deco exterior, but it has long
since been transformed into an office building, with a Mexican
restaurant on the ground floor.
The Mayo, next door, fell into disrepair in the 1980s, but it
recently came under new ownership and has been restored to
something approaching its original glory. It now houses a small
museum dedicated to its history, and I wandered through it, past
the photos of the celebrities and politicians who’d stayed there in
its heyday: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Marilyn Monroe, and
Elvis Presley. I stood atop the steps where Louise remembered
standing when M. A. Wright told her that she’d never see him
again.
On the other side of town I stopped in on Terry Funk, the lawyer
who had represented Judith in her first lawsuit back in 1994.
Judith had filed an ethics complaint against him, but they’d
halfway reconciled, and she still called him occasionally to fill
him in on the case’s progress. It was like that with Judith.
Funk, wearing a white button-down monogrammed with his initials,
genially welcomed me into his glassed-in high-rise office. I sat
across from him at his desk and pressed him to remember what he
could of the case in which he had once been embroiled. “She had
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