All In the Line of (Jury) Duty

September 13, 2003 -- The trial is over but traumatized Snowtown jurors may have begun life sentences of their own.

When they were called up for jury service, they would have had no idea what to expect. For the next 11 months, the Snowtown jury was subjected to perhaps the most gruesome evidence ever presented to an Australian court. They heard of torture, dismemberment, and ritual killings.

What effect would such an ordeal have on the lives - and the minds - of the metaphorical "12 good men and true" at the heart of the legal system? (In this case, they included six women.)

According to one mental health expert, the unsuspecting jurors could suffer trauma as if they themselves had been tortured. Dr Nicholas Proctor, an associate professor of mental health at the University of South Australia, says the condition has a name: vicarious trauma.

"They have been bystanders to horrific acts," he said. After the war in Bosnia, Proctor wrote a book on the psychological effects on civilians who had seen atrocities. Those affected, he says, were ordinary people who had involuntarily witnessed death and mutilation.

The Snowtown jurors were plucked at random from the electoral roll last October. As part of the longest trial in South Australian criminal history, their normal lives were forgotten. The law prevented them from speaking about it, even to family, forcing them to bottle up what they experienced.

Jurors saw photographs of the autopsies of eight murder victims in barrels in the disused Snowtown bank vault. They heard what was found in the barrels - large pieces of skin, matted knots of hair, a kneecap, bones, dismembered torsos, bodies slashed, tortured and cut.

They heard evidence of the screams of the victims as they were tortured, as their toes were crushed with pliers, or as a sparkler inserted in a penis was lit and left to burn. One victim's arms, legs, breasts, and genitalia were cut off by ringleader John Bunting after she died. She was also decapitated.

Four jurors were excused over 11 months. When it all finally concluded this week, 220 witnesses and $15 million later, Justice Brian Martin exempted the jury from further service for life. He warned them not to have second thoughts. Books were being written about Snowtown, he said, and they may read or hear about it later but they should not be troubled over their guilty finding.

"Do not look back with any second thoughts of any kind," he said. The jury's "valuable contribution" would be recompense for disruption to their lives.

However, Proctor believes they will suffer much more than mere disruption. "They will suffer symptoms similar to someone who had first-hand trauma, because of the torture, particularly, that was described. The reaction would be that they cannot bear to hear any more. They would feel terror, helplessness, shame, and a sense of humiliation. At 11 months, this trauma was prolonged."

Proctor predicts that the Snowtown evidence might disrupt jurors' sleep and shatter their faith in humanity. Some might detach themselves from everyday life as a reaction to seeing the worst aspects of the human condition.

Some of the jury were counseled during the trial. After leaving the court, they were addressed by a psychiatrist. Flashbacks, nightmares, irritability, and sleeplessness could all be early warning signs of post-traumatic stress. Counseling will be provided in the future, as it will for Supreme Court officials and staff who saw and heard evidence. Proctor says this counseling should be similar to the counseling of torture survivors.

"It should focus on the jurors' rage and emotions and their understanding of anger, and also those things which they feel perpetuate the traumatic experience. For those who feel hopeless, it should focus on what engulfs that hopelessness, or anguish, or despair." -- Edited from the article by Chris Johnston and Penelope Debelle for The Age

Donna Walker Faces Charges of Identity Theft

Hoax Suspect Showed Split-Personality Traits

August 5, 2003 -- While playing a game of hide-and-seek near her home in a suburb of Indianapolis in 1986, 6-year-old Shannon Marie Sherrill vanished without a trace. If she were alive today, Sherrill would be 22.

On the last weekend of July, her family was elated when a woman called them after 17 years and said she believed she might be the missing girl.

Authorities say it was Donna Lynnette Walker, 35, who called Sherrill's family. Sherrill's heartbroken parents say Walker's call was a cruel hoax, but Walker told a radio station that she was only trying to help in the search.

Walker now claims she had any knowledge about the Shannon Sherrill case, and said she was not even aware police were looking for her until she saw a news report on the Internet. She said she approached her attorney, William Rork, about negotiating her surrender to help authorities. Walker surrendered to Topeka police on Thursday, a day after authorities in Indiana issued a warrant for her arrest.

Speaking Thursday, she explained why she had come forward, saying, "It's the right thing to do and I have nothing to hide."

"My only intention was to help the investigation and certainly not hinder it in any way," Walker told ABCNEWS. "I'm just confident that everything'll come out in the court system."

Court records and police interviews indicate Walker has had brushes with the law in California, Kansas, Virginia, and Nebraska. Indiana State Police say the past offenses involved making crank calls, writing bad checks, making a bomb threat and using stolen credit cards to run up long-distance charges.

A 1992 homicide investigation report from Virginia Beach, Virginia, indicated Walker might have "multiple personalities and is capable of talking in a male voice." Rork, her lawyer, said he could not comment on his client's mental health, but prosecutors were skeptical. "I have no indication whatsoever to indicate that this woman suffers from any kind of mental illness," said Meyer.

Kelli Miller, an acquaintance of Walker's, said, "She just likes the attention. She creates all the chaos around her because she thrives on the attention."

Keeley Dubus also said Walker thrived on attention and creating chaotic situations. Dubus says her family took in Donna Walker 11 years ago, believing she was running from a satanic cult. She said the family soon came to believe Walker had multiple personalities.

"It was like having another sister or several sisters in one person," Dubus said. "She spent most of her time in [her room ] with the different personalities," she said. "It was their room."

The bad girl personality was a 19-year-old named Allison that got Donna Walker into trouble with men and the law. The good girl was Donna, a 35-year-old molestation victim who diligently hunted predators on the Internet from her Yuba City duplex and turned them over to the FBI.

For years the two have dueled inside her head, accompanied by at least five other personalities who came and went, according to FBI documents, published reports and a close friend in Yuba City. The Sherrill impersonation stunt, which resulted in nationwide media attention, apparently is not her first cry for publicity.

Over the past decade in California and elsewhere, Walker has deluded law enforcement officers, friends and the media into believing that she had information about a variety of high-profile murders and others that were about to be committed.

"(She) identifies herself variously as Kara Michaels, Michelle, Donna, a preteen named Holly, and teenagers named Heather, Leslie and Lindsey," wrote FBI Special Agent Rich Davidson in an affidavit last year. Davidson, based in Chico, noted in the document that Walker's information had been used in federal cases here, as well as in Arizona, Kentucky and Washington state. "The agents, including me, have been told that she has multiple personalities."

In an interview with The Bee last summer, Walker claimed she grew up in Virginia and Iowa, and was molested from the ages of 4 to 13 by a family member. During that same period, her family also sent her to a "bizarre" church in the Midwest where she was sexually abused by a minister. The minister she named was arrested later for molesting other children associated with his church, although no case was ever brought on behalf of Walker.

At age 13, she decided to confide in family members about the ongoing molestation, and she said she was sent to a psychiatric hospital for eight months. Over the next two decades, Walker moved frequently.

Reports in the Indianapolis Star indicate high school classmates in Virginia Beach, Virginia, accused her of making prank calls in a variety of voices. A neighbor said she called one day saying that she had witnessed a murder and that she was in danger, but the murder already had been solved.

In 1991 and 1994, she was arrested and convicted of prostitution in Sacramento.

In the next five years, she became an FBI informant, providing agents with the names and locations of adults who tried to lure children into sex on the Internet. Sometimes her information was good, but sometimes, authorities discovered, it was complete fabrication.

By October 2000, she was living in Yuba City. In the next 21 months, Yuba City police officers were sent to her home on 16 occasions for reports ranging from alleged prowlers to two separate missing persons cases.

During that time, she told The Bee, she was on disability leave from a job as a medical records clerk. Most of the time she sat in the office of her tiny duplex, trolling Internet chat rooms where adult men offered graphic photographs and conversations to young girls. Walker posed as a preteen looking for adventure.

Sometimes, she also baby-sat a neighbor's 18-month-old daughter, according to the close friend, who asked not to be identified.

At the same time, Walker displayed what her friend believes were several major personality splits: on at least four occasions, she vanished for days, reappearing in her apartment apparently disoriented, unaware of the date and with unexplained injuries.

"I don't know how much of it was real and how much of it was her imagination," the friend said. "Once a piece of information that seemed absolutely ridiculous turned out to be true, you started believing more of her stories. She threw in enough truth to make you think it was all real."

By the end of 2002, the friend began to see evidence of the personality splits: sometimes Walker would use the voices and mannerisms of much younger women. When Walker disappeared, the friend got puzzling telephone calls from "Brian," a man who purported to be Walker's friend. FBI agents later told the (Portland) Oregonian newspaper they believed Brian to be another of Walker's personalities.

In January 2002, Portland authorities and a reporter at the Oregonian got telephone calls from someone sounding like a preteen girl saying she was a missing Michigan child who had been brought to Oregon by her abductor, according to the newspaper. It was a hoax: The 13-year-old girl was found in West Virginia. FBI agents told the Oregonian they believed the caller was Walker.

Nonetheless, the following month, Indiana FBI agents indicted 40-year-old Charles Steers on child pornography charges after Walker provided incriminating information about him she obtained while pretending to be Holly, an 11-year-old California girl. Among the evidence were photographs of Steers raping a toddler, according to FBI reports obtained by The Bee.

In April 2002, federal officials in Phoenix arrested Gregory Allen Harris after Walker tipped them that he was trying to engage children in sex. His computer had numerous child pornography images, according to the FBI.

In May 2002, FBI agents in Marysville arrested Donald Keffler as he got off a bus from Washington state expecting to meet "Holly," the 11-year-old. Walker, posing as Holly, had asked him to meet at a hotel "near her middle school." His laptop computer had photographs of Keffler engaged in sexual activity with young children.

Throughout the spring, Walker's behavior became increasingly erratic, the friend said. In mid-July, she vanished, leaving behind a slit screen door and a ransacked apartment.

A few days later, "Brian" called The Bee, saying that Walker had been abducted by a Portland man whom she was tracking online. Authorities were suspicious of the story, especially after Portland officials discovered that Walker had apparently flown to Portland voluntarily to meet her alleged abductor.

Two weeks after her disappearance, Walker resurfaced, staying with a friend in Des Moines, Iowa, claiming to be suicidal. "You don't know my life," she told The Bee in an August telephone call. "My life was unpleasant from the moment I was brought into this earth."

According to published reports, Walker moved to Topeka, Kansas, in April, telling her landlord she wanted to find a quiet place to write a book. Since then, she's spent time in a mental hospital and undergone extensive outpatient therapy, a judge noted last week after Walker was accused of impersonating Sherrill.

"I felt a lot less ridiculous in not being the only one who got duped by her," the friend in Yuba City said last week as Walker's tear-stained image appeared on cable television networks. "She's obviously very good at this."

Looking quiet and subdued in a Shawnee County Jail jumpsuit, Walker appeared in a Topeka, Kansas, court and was granted a $100,000 bond today. Another hearing was scheduled for next Wednesday.

She was also instructed not to leave Topeka, or have access to phones if she posts bail. "She is in my opinion, without going into any detail, a potential flight risk," said District Court Judge Thomas Conklin.

A small group of protesters outside the courthouse said that Walker needs mental health services rather than jail time. One activist asserted that national news organizations are unfair to give Walker's case so much attention while ignoring the plight of missing black children.

Walker commented through her lawyer, William "Billy" Rork, in an appearance on CBS's "The Early Show." Rork said Walker decided to surrender in Kansas, rather than be arrested, after hearing there were criminal charges against her.

He said that Walker is sorry about any "misinterpretation" and that she's distressed because she doesn't think she committed any criminal acts. Rork also said she told him that she has no criminal past, despite reports to the contrary.

Rork said he expected bail to be granted at Friday's hearing. He said first offenses of this type usually don't draw any jail time in either Kansas or Indiana. He notes that bail is to ensure an appearance, not to punish.

Criminal impersonation is a misdemeanor, and is defined as being committed with an intent to defraud and gain something from a victim. There is no indication that Walker intended to gain anything material from Sherrill's family through her impersonation of their daughter.

Indiana officials plan to seek Walker's extradition. Walker is charged in Indiana with identity deception, a class D felony, and false reporting, a class A misdemeanor.

Rork has said he will fight extradition, expressing doubt that Walker has even committed a crime. He is seeking to have her bail amount lowered from $100,000 to $10,000 at a hearing set for 3 PM, Wednesday, at Topeka's Shawnee County District Court.

At the time of this report, Walker is still in jail.

The Indiana State Police has asked the public to call 317-899-8577 with any information about Walker or Shannon Sherrill's disappearance. -- Edited and excerpted from the article by Mareva Brown in the Sacremento Bee, ABC News, News 14 Carolina,WISH TV 8 (photos), WIBW, and RTV 6

Rational Criminals and Intentional Accidents

The Economics of Law and Law Breaking

The economic approach to crime starts from one simple assumption: criminals are rational. A burglar burgles for the same reason I teach economics--because he finds it a more attractive profession than any other. The obvious conclusion is that the way to reduce burglary--whether as a legislator or a homeowner--is by raising the costs of the burglar's profession or reducing its benefits.

Why Didn't Elizabeth Smart Try to Escape?

"Stockholm Syndrome" and the Elizabeth Smart Case

Stockholm Syndrome describes the behavior of kidnap victims who, over time, become sympathetic to their captors. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, Sweden. At the end of six days of captivity in a bank, several kidnap victims actually resisted rescue attempts, and afterwards refused to testify against their captors.

While some people are suggesting the recent Elizabeth Smart kidnapping sounds like a case of Stockholm Syndrome, the most famous incident in the U.S. involved the kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst. Captured by a radical political group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, Ms. Hearst eventually became an accomplice of the group, taking on an assumed name and assisting them in several bank robberies. After her re-capture, she denounced the group and her involvement.

What causes Stockholm Syndrome? Captives begin to identify with their captors initially as a defensive mechanism, out of fear of violence. Small acts of kindness by the captor are magnified, since finding perspective in a hostage situation is by definition impossible. Rescue attempts are also seen as a threat, since it's likely the captive would be injured during such attempts.

It's important to note that these symptoms occur under tremendous emotional and often physical duress. The behavior is considered a common survival strategy for victims of interpersonal abuse, and has been observed in battered spouses, abused children, prisoners of war, and concentration camp survivors.