a
good story,” he told me. “You get a lot of b.s. cases, but for some
reason I tended to believe her.”
He remembered filing for her in Texas and warning her that he
wasn’t licensed—“that ended up getting me in trouble,” he said—and
confirmed that Wright’s lawyers had “made some kind of offer, I
don’t even know what.” Nor could he remember the blood tests or the
audiotapes that Judith told me she’d given him of conversations
with Wright. It had been two decades almost, and many of the
specifics of the case eluded him. But Judith’s other lawyers had
long suspected that Funk remembered much more than he let on.
Hoping to force his memory, I reminded him of something he had said
in Louise’s deposition. He paused. “I kept a diary in Vietnam,” he
said after a moment, “and I was reading through it the other day. I
saw that ‘he did this, we did that,’ and I said to myself, I don’t
remember that. But there it is on paper.”
The next day I drove up to Carthage and checked into the Best
Western Precious Moments Hotel, just off the highway. I wanted to
try one more time to talk to Rick Harris and Ethel Louise Williams,
the two people who could still, if I managed to get them to talk,
fill in the story’s gaps. With the legal battle over, I figured,
maybe they would finally tell their stories.
Judith had told me that she’d heard that Rick had grown more
erratic, attacking customers at the store. Indeed, on the website
for the Joplin police I found the record of an arrest the previous
year for assault, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest. He’d
failed to show up in court several times since. Now, she said, he’d
disappeared, having moved out of his house to nobody knew where.
When I drove by his shop, I saw it had been transformed into an
antiques store. The proprietors had never met him but had heard
stories of his outbursts.
The next day, on an oppressive ash-sky afternoon, I drove across
the Kansas border to Baxter Springs, to the last address I could
find for Ethel Louise Williams. The house was just off the old
Route 66, but without the historical markers the street looked like
any other in a small town. Williams’s home was a gray two-story
house with a green roof. The yard was overrun with junk: an empty
blue barrel, a small sculpture of a lighthouse, a green plastic
cactus. The most prominent item was a wood-paneled hot tub with one
side caved in.
There was a car in the driveway; I parked behind it and walked
up to the front door. A sign on it read, “This is a no smoking
house. Oxygen tanks in use.” Through the little window in the door
I could see tanks strewn around and a stack of moldy-looking mail
on a nearby table, but not much else. I knocked, then rang the
doorbell. Nothing stirred.
I drove over twice more in the next two days, but nobody ever
came to the door. In truth, I felt relieved. Ethel Louise Williams
would be 79 years old, and apparently was in poor health. Her
doctor had written a note to the court saying she had dementia.
----
Most of our stories pass into oblivion
along with the dead. M. A. Wright died in 1992. Jean Phillips
passed away in 2010. Wright’s second wife, Josephine, died in 2004,
followed by Wright’s daughter by his first marriage, Judith Wright
Reid, in 2008. They all died before I found time to call and ask
them what in Judith’s story was true to their own experience. Even
Dominick Dunne died in 2009, suggesting the counterfactual
possibility that if Judith had really gotten to him, the account of
her story might’ve died with him. I doubt it, though. Judith would
have found someone like me eventually.
There are dozens of possible versions of the truth in Judith’s
life story, alternate explanations for all the pages in the boxes
stacked in her bedroom closet. I have hours of tape of Judith
telling me the story in different configurations, starting at
different points. After years of wading through it all, my own best
guess
good story,” he told me. “You get a lot of b.s. cases, but for some
reason I tended to believe her.”
He remembered filing for her in Texas and warning her that he
wasn’t licensed—“that ended up getting me in trouble,” he said—and
confirmed that Wright’s lawyers had “made some kind of offer, I
don’t even know what.” Nor could he remember the blood tests or the
audiotapes that Judith told me she’d given him of conversations
with Wright. It had been two decades almost, and many of the
specifics of the case eluded him. But Judith’s other lawyers had
long suspected that Funk remembered much more than he let on.
Hoping to force his memory, I reminded him of something he had said
in Louise’s deposition. He paused. “I kept a diary in Vietnam,” he
said after a moment, “and I was reading through it the other day. I
saw that ‘he did this, we did that,’ and I said to myself, I don’t
remember that. But there it is on paper.”
The next day I drove up to Carthage and checked into the Best
Western Precious Moments Hotel, just off the highway. I wanted to
try one more time to talk to Rick Harris and Ethel Louise Williams,
the two people who could still, if I managed to get them to talk,
fill in the story’s gaps. With the legal battle over, I figured,
maybe they would finally tell their stories.
Judith had told me that she’d heard that Rick had grown more
erratic, attacking customers at the store. Indeed, on the website
for the Joplin police I found the record of an arrest the previous
year for assault, disturbing the peace, and resisting arrest. He’d
failed to show up in court several times since. Now, she said, he’d
disappeared, having moved out of his house to nobody knew where.
When I drove by his shop, I saw it had been transformed into an
antiques store. The proprietors had never met him but had heard
stories of his outbursts.
The next day, on an oppressive ash-sky afternoon, I drove across
the Kansas border to Baxter Springs, to the last address I could
find for Ethel Louise Williams. The house was just off the old
Route 66, but without the historical markers the street looked like
any other in a small town. Williams’s home was a gray two-story
house with a green roof. The yard was overrun with junk: an empty
blue barrel, a small sculpture of a lighthouse, a green plastic
cactus. The most prominent item was a wood-paneled hot tub with one
side caved in.
There was a car in the driveway; I parked behind it and walked
up to the front door. A sign on it read, “This is a no smoking
house. Oxygen tanks in use.” Through the little window in the door
I could see tanks strewn around and a stack of moldy-looking mail
on a nearby table, but not much else. I knocked, then rang the
doorbell. Nothing stirred.
I drove over twice more in the next two days, but nobody ever
came to the door. In truth, I felt relieved. Ethel Louise Williams
would be 79 years old, and apparently was in poor health. Her
doctor had written a note to the court saying she had dementia.
----
Most of our stories pass into oblivion
along with the dead. M. A. Wright died in 1992. Jean Phillips
passed away in 2010. Wright’s second wife, Josephine, died in 2004,
followed by Wright’s daughter by his first marriage, Judith Wright
Reid, in 2008. They all died before I found time to call and ask
them what in Judith’s story was true to their own experience. Even
Dominick Dunne died in 2009, suggesting the counterfactual
possibility that if Judith had really gotten to him, the account of
her story might’ve died with him. I doubt it, though. Judith would
have found someone like me eventually.
There are dozens of possible versions of the truth in Judith’s
life story, alternate explanations for all the pages in the boxes
stacked in her bedroom closet. I have hours of tape of Judith
telling me the story in different configurations, starting at
different points. After years of wading through it all, my own best
guess
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