Strangers Beside Me

Seduced by Madness: The Diane Borchardt Story (1996)

Seduced by Madness: the Diane Borchardt Story (1996)  Ann-Margaret, Peter Coyote.

A rare Lifetime portrayal of female-on-male domestic violence.

When not whacking her husband Ruben across the jaw with a telephone or other convenient household object, Diane Borchardt was busy belittling and neglecting his children from a previous marriage and complaining about her pitiful lot in life to impressionable teenagers during study hall at the local high school, where she was a monitor.

When Ruben meets a nice woman who doesn’t abuse him, sets about divorcing Diane, and, worse, appears to be getting the house (since it is also his place of business), Diane gets a little teed off and notices how it would work out a lot better for her if Ruben, say, DIED, before the divorce so she could get the house and the payout on his life insurance policy.* She talks some teenage boys at the school into killing Ruben in exchange for a portion of the life insurance (while of course also telling them that Ruben has been beating her).

Can you believe one of the teenagers spilled later (possibly because Diane never quite got around to paying them) and now Diane is in jail on a 45-year murder sentence? Boy, kids these days.

Based on a true story! You can read Diane declaiming her innocence and begging for funding for her appeal here, along with some interesting comments from people who knew Diane before she went to the big house. Apparently, there’s also an American Justice episode about “Mrs. B”, though the A & E website sadly notes that they will not be able to ship the DVD in time for Father’s Day, so it’s ties and aftershave again for poor old dad this year.

*Lifetime Fact For Women: Diane remarks to someone that Ruben can’t change the beneficiary on his life insurance policy until the divorce is final. In reality, you can name anyone you want as beneficiary on a life insurance policy, though probably Ruben hadn’t gotten around to it yet by the time of his death.

Lifetime rating: ***

Lifetime Movie Review: The Staircase Murders (2007)

The Staircase Murders (2007) Treat Williams, Samaire Armstrong, Kevin Pollack

Douchebag novelist kills two women, probably for money, on two continents using identical method.

Just about exactly what it sounds like (based on Aphrodite Jones’ A Perfect Husband,, a true crime account of a pair of murders committed by author Michael Peterson), though the continuing loyalty of the daughters of Peterson’s first victim adds a dash of extra creepiness to the tale. Peterson appears to be a pretty accomplished manipulative sociopath, but to some extent his arrogance was his undoing. Sure, maybe the cops in one jurisdiction will overlook multiple deep head wounds to find natural/accidental death once, but in a completely different one a second time too? Other people are not as stupid as you think, Michael Peterson.

Well, most other people. The somewhat distanced and semi-objective female British documentarian depicted in the Lifetime movie version was in reality an annoying French dude who thinks “It is obvious that if the wealthy, famous, white writer Michael Peterson hadn't been bisexual, the case would never have come to court.” Lestrade’s documentary was eventually released under the title Soupcon (“Suspicion”) or The Staircase in the U.S. According to the Salon review, the extreme creepiness of Michael Peterson shines right through the filmmaker’s bias.

Checking Amazon, it looks like Diane Fanning’s Written in Blood rather than the Aphrodite Jones' book is the best account of the subject. I might need to read this to learn what was up with those Peterson kids, that looked like one of the weirdest family dynamics that does not involve overt abuse ever.

Lifetime rating: **

Lifetime Sentencing Statistics For Women

I knew that statistic dropped at the end of the Donna Yaklich movie sounded pretty off (“The average sentence for a man who kills his wife is 2-6 years. The average sentence for a wife who kills her husband is 15-20. Donna Yaklich’s 40-year sentence for conspiracy to murder is currently under review.”) My impression has always been that women tend to receive lighter sentences than men for all types of violent crime. And indeed, this particular Lifetime Fact For Women turns out to be approximately the exact opposite of true. From a 1994 Bureau of Justice Statistics study of spousal homicides (based on a 1988 data set):

Wife defendants had a lower conviction rate than husband defendants--

* Of the 222 wife defendants, 70% were convicted of killing their mate. By contrast, of the 318 husband defendants, 87% were convicted of spouse murder.

* Of the 100 wife defendants tried by either a judge or jury, 31% were acquitted. But of the 138 husband defendants tried, 6% were acquitted.

* Of the 59 wife defendants tried by a jury, 27% were acquitted. But of the estimated 91 husband defendants tried by a jury, none was acquitted ...

An estimated 156 wives and 275 husbands were convicted of killing their spouse. Convicted wives were less likely than convicted husbands to be sentenced to prison, and convicted wives received shorter prison sentences than their male counterparts--

* 81% of convicted wives but 94% of convicted husbands received a prison sentence.

* On average, convicted wives received prison sentences that were about 10 years shorter than what husbands received. Excluding life or death sentences, the average prison sentence for killing a spouse was 6 years for wives but 16.5 years for husbands.

* Among wives sentenced to prison, 15% received a sentence of 20 years or more (including life imprisonment and the death penalty); among husbands, it was 43% ...

According to information contained in prosecutor files, more wife defendants (44%) than husband defendants (10%) had been assaulted by their spouse (threatened with a weapon or physically assaulted) at or around the time of the murder ...

In certain circumstances, extreme victim provocation may justify taking a life in self-defense. Provocation was more often present in wife defendant cases, and wife defendants were less likely than husband defendants to be convicted, suggesting that the relatively high rate of victim provocation characteristic of wife defendant cases was one of the reasons wife defendants had a lower conviction rate than husband defendants. Consistent with that, of the provoked wife defendants, 56% were convicted, significantly lower than either the 86% conviction rate for unprovoked wife defendants or the 88% conviction rate for unprovoked husbands ...

Wives received shorter prison sentences than husbands (a 10-year difference, on average) even when the comparison is restricted to defendants who were alike in terms of whether or not they were provoked--

* The average prison sentence for unprovoked wife defendants was 7 years, or 10 years shorter than the average 17 years for unprovoked husband defendants.

I also found some tips for investigators in distinguishing between various motives for spousal murder in Domestic Homicide of Male Spouses by Females: A Review for Death Investigators, by Lt. Cynthia T. Ferguson, so that should totally come in handy for everybody.

Lifetime Movie Review: We the Jury (1996)

We the Jury (1996) Lauren Hutton, Kelly McGillis.

Your abusive husband: Should you kill him? Lifetime is ambivalent. Part 4 in a series.

This is basically 12 Angry Men, except instead of acquitting an innocent defendant, the jury examines little facts overlooked by counsel during the trial to find a woman presenting the battered wife defense guilty of the first-degree murder of her husband.

Lauren Hutton plays popular daytime talkshow host Wynne Atwood, who is on trial for having taken a gun into the bedroom in her house where her husband was with his mistress, and shot him repeatedly in the face. At trial, she paints a pretty lurid picture of abuse, including being forced into group sex by her husband, and his threats to kill her. The jurors (who run a gamut of stereotypes, from the sexist macho Latino man to the hesitant elderly immigrant woman to the chivalrous old gentleman to the spazzy feminist who smokes pointedly from within her bubble of rage, etc.) initially split along gender lines, with the women wanting to go for a manslaughter verdict, and the men mostly split between first and second degree murder. Bit by bit, they pick holes in Atwood’s story while squabbling pettishly with each other, and eventually decide that she really killed her husband to avoid losing half of her considerable estate in divorce proceedings over her husband’s philandering, and made the abuse story up out of whole cloth.

So, while clearly we’re supposed to think that the host’s crime is manslaughter at worst if her abuse story is true, it just so happens not to be. (“I can’t betray all women!” declaims the prickly feminist juror as the host’s lies become undeniable even to her. “Not all women, just one woman, who lied,” explains the middle-aged intelligent rational soccer mom audience identification character.)

I’m awarding a full additional star for the scene where they’re about to read the verdict, and Lauren Hutton is striking her very best long-suffering tragic Lifetime heroine pose, which is 100% convincing except by then you know for sure that she’s actually a lying cold-blooded murderer.

Lifetime Rating: ****

Lifetime Movie Review: Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story (1994)

Cries Unheard: The Donna Yaklich Story (1994) Jaclyn Smith, Hilary Swank, David Lascher, Brad Johnson

Your abusive husband: Should You Kill Him? ABC is ambivalent. Part 3 in a series.

(This is an ABC made-for-tv movie occasionally rebroadcast on the Lifetime Movie Network.)

Based on a true story, using real names! Donna Yaklich hired a neighborhood teen and his older brother (Charles & Edward Greenwell) to kill her narcotics cop husband Dennis in 1985 in Pueblo, Colorado, and presented the battered woman defense at her trial for murder and conspiracy to murder.

The movie begins with Donna in prison, explaining to her adult son Dennis Jr. (who was about five when his father died) why she had to have Dennis Sr. killed. As told in flashback, when Donna first meets Dennis Yaklich, he is a kind and loving man whose late wife had died of an allergic reaction to diet pills (he claims!), and whose grieving stepdaughter Patty needs a mother. Soon after seeing Donna interact with Patty on one of their dates, he invites her to move in and look after Patty, purely as “a business arrangement.” They gradually fall in love and marry. But during their courtship, a cop friend of Dennis who turns out to be a steroid pusher remarks on how Dennis, whose hobby is bodybuilding, seems to be “shrinking,” so Dennis goes back on steroids, and has a complete personality change. He has a hair-trigger temper and begins physically abusing Donna. Donna can’t reconcile this change with “the man I fell in love with,” and marries him anyway.

The abuse continues, and Donna finally learns about his renewed steroid use (“It makes him crazy,” Patty explains). Donna discovers that she cannot leave the marriage; Dennis tells her the police won’t do anything for her because he is a cop, and that he will take Dennis Jr. away from her, and kill both her and her sister too, if she tries to leave and divorce him. Donna comes to believe that Dennis actually killed his former wife as well; she had some damage to her liver which Dennis explained as having resulted from his attempts to revive her with CPR, but Donna thinks he must have beaten her to death. Desperate, she convinces a neighborhood teen (who eventually involves his brother) to kill Dennis for her, in exchange for $50,000 that she will receive from Dennis’ life insurance.

The Greenwells lay in wait for Dennis near the driveway and shoot him one night when he comes home from work. After a few months, another teenager overhears them talking about the murder, and the plot soon comes to light. Donna is acquitted of murder one based on her battered woman defense, but convicted of conspiracy to murder, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The movie ends with Dennis Jr. accepting Donna’s explanation, and a voiceover intones: “The average sentence for a man who kills his wife is 2-6 years. The average sentence for a wife who kills her husband is 15-20.* Donna Yaklich’s 40-year sentence for conspiracy to murder is currently under review.”

After watching this movie, I began to think maybe I needed to add a “When She Was Stupid” category; I’ve seen a couple other Lifetime movies lately (Terror in the Family, The Girl Next Door, reviews forthcoming) that were intended as “serious” portrayals of female violence, in which they seemed to be having trouble writing violent female characters, and opted to portray them as borderline retarded to explain their extreme behavior. In the movie, Donna lacks certain core competencies battered women generally seem to develop, like scheduling your sister to come and pick you and your son and your belongings up when your abusive husband ISN’T home, or coming up with any one of 200 possible reasons to explain why his teenage step-daughter is crying on your shoulder, other than “she’s pregnant!” so you can put that revelation off for a better time, or at least after certain things have been figured out, like where else she could be staying when you tell him, for example. Or just generally always walking into confrontations with him and being surprised every time that it didn’t go so well. True, the various stratagems abused women develop to “handle” their abusers usually fail in the end, but they do generally exist for a while first. I assumed however that all this was an artefact of tv-movieness rather than a reflection of what actually happened. I also kind of wondered if a man with three dependents would really only carry $50,000 in life insurance.

To Google! It turns out, there is a Free Donna Yaklich website (which appears to enjoy some degree of direct participation from Donna Yaklich, and which I will not link to directly, since I don’t necessarily want those folks to notice me all that much, for reasons that will become clear as we proceed). But apart from that and announcements about and reviews of the ABC movie, there isn’t much on Google (presumably because the murder and trial happened back in the 80s). There is a story about Vanessa Yaklich (who?), who was 11 at the time of her father’s death (what, more children in the house?), and strenuously objects to Donna’s characterization of her father as an abuser.

Using my magical powers to access some online newspaper databases, I discovered the following highly interesting facts about Donna Yaklich, as reported in the Colorado Springs Gazette 1985-1993, that somehow didn’t arise in the movie:

• Dennis Yaklich actually had 4 children from his previous marriage, 3 his and Kim (apparently “Patty”) his step-daughter.
• Donna cleaned out a $20,000 trust fund Dennis’ late wife had set up for her four children.
• At the time of her murder trial, Donna pled guilty to charges that she had fraudulently withdrawn $70,000 from her in-laws’ bank account.
• Dennis Yaklich was carrying about $250,000 in life insurance at the time of his death.
• Donna had one extramarital affair about a year before the murder.
• Donna had a new boyfriend within weeks of the murder, and was arrested while on vacation with him in Jamaica.
• Most of the money had been spent at the time of the arrest, and she never paid the Greenwells more than a few thousand each.
• Donna negotiated with the Greenwells about her husband’s murder for a period of 10 months before the murder.
• Donna did spend two days at a shelter several years before the murder, but left voluntarily (in the movie, Dennis is shown barging in with his badge out, and dragging Donna out while shelter workers look on helplessly, since he’s a cop and can totally do that).**
• Dennis was a Pueblo city cop, but the Yakliches lived outside of his jurisdiction, and any police calls from their house would have been answered by the local sheriff’s department instead.
• Donna never sought medical treatment for any injuries resulting from abuse by Dennis, nor did she ever call police about any incident.
• Donna described only two instances of abuse at her trial, one in which Dennis hit her with a thrown soda can, and one in which, 3 years before the murder, he held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her.
• None of the Yaklich children, who all still lived in the house at the time of Dennis’ death, ever witnessed any physical abuse of Donna by Dennis.
• Co-workers who noticed bruises on Donna’s arms or had conversations with her in which she described Dennis’ threats to kill her and take her children reported those incidents as within the 10-month time frame when Donna was in the process of hiring the killers.
• Expert psychological testimony for the defense came from Dr. Lenore Walker, who both coined the term and wrote the book on battered woman syndrome, and Donna had read her book before meeting Dr. Walker for the psychological evaluation.
• When asked if she’d ever done any comparative studies on the psychology of abused vs. non-abused women, Dr. Walker remarked that she’d not been able to find enough non-battered women to study.
• On the night of Dennis’ murder, Donna rattled off a list of drug offenders Dennis had arrested to police to suggest possible suspects. Once the Greenwells had talked to police, Donna at first denied even knowing them. Once the police showed that they could prove that she did know them, she said that Dennis had talked about committing suicide, but wanted to go out “in a blaze of glory,” so had probably hired the Greenwells himself. Then finally she began telling the abuse story.
• One of the expert witnesses for the prosecution, Dr. Alice Brill, testified that Donna didn’t seem to fit the profile of a battered woman who kills her husband in fear of her life, since they tend to experience constantly escalating abuse up to the time of the killing, act with little premeditation, are remorseful and cooperative with police afterwards, and have little interest in pursuing relationships with other men.
• Shortly before he was killed, Dennis Yaklich told his brother that he was planning to divorce Donna after Christmas (he was killed on December 12th).
• The script for the movie was based solely on interviews with Donna Yaklich in prison.

However, I also learned:

• Donna actually moved in with Dennis and started looking after his children a few months after the death of his first wife.
• Dennis’ behavior towards Donna was generally described by witnesses as derogatory and unaffectionate.
• A telephone repairman who came to the Yaklich residence to replace a phone that had been ripped out of the wall did recall seeing a woman there who had bruises on her face and neck.
• Both the Greenwells said they had seen Donna with bruises.
• Dennis Yaklich had a reputation as a hyper-aggressive cop who was believed by his family and associates to have been the subject of a citizen complaint in which an officer grabbed a child and held a gun to its head to get drug suspects to tell him where drugs were hidden in their house. (The complaint was dropped so the name of the officer was never made public; one friend of the family testified that Dennis had said he was the officer involved).
• Dennis did indeed kick his stepdaughter Kim out of the house for getting pregnant; at the trial, Kim testified that he had always treated her worse than the other children because she was not his biological child.

So I ask you, dear reader: Would it be easier for you to think about killing your husband for the insurance money if he were a misogynist dick who was planning to divorce you after you’d wasted your youth raising his young children from a previous marriage for him, in return for presumably whatever a police officer with 4 other children is expected to pay in support for one ex-wife and one child? If he had always been mean to you and even beat you up sometimes?

Yeah, me too. Nonetheless, this is still a crime! And getting this movie made in this particular way is kind of a creepy continuation of it.

*Probably an ABC/Lifetime fact for women, further research needed, watch this+ space.

**Definitely an ABC/Lifetime fact for women

Lifetime Rating: * (for being a house of lies)

+Lifetime Fact Update: here.

Lifetime Movie Review: Dangerous Intentions (1995)

Dangerous Intentions (1995) Donna Mills, Corbin Bernsen, Robin Givens

Your abusive husband: Should you kill him? I am ambivalent. Part 2 in a series.

This is a straight-up and pretty realistic plight-of-the-battered-woman movie. Beth Williamson finally calls the police on her abusive and violent husband Tom, but he’s released on parole and begins stalking and threatening to kill her, at one point setting fire to the house where she is staying. Eventually she goes into a shelter and makes friends with Kaye, who has been moving from place to place avoiding her murderous ex for years. One day Kaye’s ex-husband shows up and stabs Kaye to death in broad daylight at a bus stop, and right in front of Beth. Beth briefly receives witness protection, enabling her to testify at Kaye’s ex-husband’s trial, but the protection is lifted afterwards, and Tom eventually finds her and their daughter. Tom breaks into the house and threatens Beth with a gun, but an alert neighbor calls police just in time. Tom is hauled off, presumably to jail (though for how long on attempted murder, or possibly even just assault, one wonders?)

The possibility of Beth just killing Tom as the solution to everyone’s problems does not actually arise in the movie. It did keep occurring to ME, however, as it also always does when I read in the Metro section of the local paper (at depressingly regular intervals) about women who finally receive an impressive array of police services when their battering stalker exes succeed in killing them at last.

However, it turns out that the law is not as big a fan of the “get him before he gets you” theory of self-defense as I am. If I’m reading some things I found online correctly (the Wikipedia entry on the battered woman defense, a long essay by an attorney who specializes in battered-woman-defense murder cases, a summary of legal issues involved in this form of defense from divorcenet, and an article about typical outcomes of battered-woman-defense cases), the battered woman defense in practice pretty much amounts to a diminished capacity defense. Self-defense theory per se turns out not to work very well in court without any “imminent threat”; just because you reasonably expect your boyfirend or husband to kill you eventually doesn’t mean you get to kill him in his sleep NOW. Instead, you’ve either got to use non-disproportionate force while he’s actually attacking you (in which case it is simple self-defense), or, if not, you’ve got to prove that you weren’t thinking straight at the time and failed to pursue other alternatives due to battered woman syndrome. (That none of the alternatives—restraining orders, shelters, etc.—are likely to stop a really determined batterer is neither here nor there; if you didn’t jump through the hoops and still want to claim self-defense, you must present expert testimony about your battered woman’s syndrome to explain why you didn’t).

Which seems to lead to a conundrum: Somebody like Beth in this Lifetime movie, who has gone through all the legal motions, is basically too together and too apparently capable of taking rational steps to protect herself ever to be able to claim “battered woman syndrome” if she fails to wait for her ex to actually make a lethal attack on her (and, DUH, totally get the drop on her) before, say, shooting him in the head. Yet in a common sense sort of way, she is the most justified in just preemptively killing him whenever he shows up in defiance of his restraining order, since in so doing he basically proves that none of the other approved methods of dealing with him will ever work.

The law really IS an ass, is it not? Or maybe I’m misunderstanding something.

Lifetime rating: **

Note: The Abuse Excuse catagory applies to Tom in this instance, who mentions his mean Dad at some point, not to Beth, who never does anything requiring an excuse anyway. I point this out only because in the course of reading up on the battered woman defense, I learned that the term "abuse excuse" was actually invented by Alan Dershowitz to deride the idea of this type of defense. That is NOT how I'm using the term here.

Lifetime Movie Review: Every 9 Seconds (1997)

Every 9 Seconds (1997) Gail O’Grady, Emily Hampshire, Amy Pietz.

Your abusive husband: Should you kill him? Lifetime is ambivalent. Pt. 1 in a series.

A woman (Janet) whose abusive husband (Richard) just got out of prison on early release and came by earlier that day to menace her and demand to see their daughter calls the world’s worst domestic violence hotline. He’s coming back later, and she’s planning to kill him when he shows up! Since obviously there is no need to do any background or reference checks on persons applying to work on a domestic violence hotline, the “volunteer” who answers the would-be murderess’ call is actually a reporter (Carrie) doing a story on spousal abuse. She resolves to find this woman and stop her before it’s too late! Her supervisor explains that she won’t trace the call because calls are supposed to be confidential. Carrie craftily waits until the supervisor’s back is turned before running out of the office and to her car.

Janet mentioned the name of liquor store where she’d be picking up her next fifth of vodka, so Carrie does manage to find her. Then there’s a lot of chasing around and heartfelt pleading and the inevitable scene of Janet holding the gun on Richard but being unable to pull the trigger, so he just grabs it away from her. It turns out to take a surprisingly large amount of screen time to explain while nobody can call the police during all this in the age of the cell phone (Carrie left her cell phone at home that day, all payphones are out of order, 911 was “busy,” Richard breaks the house phone, etc. etc. Then once Carrie manages to call the hotline at least, it turns out it will take “upwards of an hour” to trace the call because it’s “coming from another district.*)

Then there’s some more chasing around, and we end up with Richard on the roof of the building where the daughter had been hiding, threatening to throw Janet off. Carrie talks him into letting her go, then talks him into not killing himself. It turns out, her own father beat her mother to death, then killed himself. Tearfully, she says, “Everybody acted like he was better off dead, but nobody knew that I still needed him! I still needed my father!” So he doesn’t kill himself and allows himself to be arrested.

Meanwhile, intercut with all this, another volunteer attempts to convince another caller not to go out with her scary boyfriend again, but she goes anyway, and he rapes and beats her badly enough to put her in the hospital. Naturally the volunteer staff all show up at her bedside. Carrie is sorry she missed the calls. “It’s okay, you can’t catch ‘em all” her supervisor says. But apparently you can always track them down!

*Probably a Lifetime fact.

Lifetime Rating: **