On that night, she and a friend went on a double date with Shay and Carl Sidney Roberts, a twenty-three-year-old friend of his from Bolivar. The foursome went to a drive-in movie, and after the show, Roberts, who was driving, took his date home. Instead of then taking Elaine home, however, he drove south of town on Fremont to the Lake Springfield vicinity and pulled off the road in a secluded area. According to Miss Hale's later story, when Shay got some beer from the glove compartment and he and Roberts started drinking, she got anxious and asked to be taken home, but Shay threatened to "rough her up" if she didn't shut up. She started screaming, and Roberts punched and choked her to make her be quiet. He then held her down while Shay raped her, and then Shay held her while Roberts also criminally assaulted her. Elaine tried to resist, scratching Shay and biting Roberts, but to no avail.
After the assault, the young men dropped Elaine off in the wee hours of April 27 near her home on East Trafficway, and she immediately reported what had happened to her father, who promptly notified police. The officers took Elaine, who was bleeding from the mouth, to a doctor, who confirmed that she'd been sexually assaulted, and she identified her attackers. They were located and taken into custody at a cafe on Kearney Street a short time later. Shay had scratches on his hands and arms and abrasions on his face, while Roberts had a mark on his wrist. In addition, Elaine's socks were found in the car stuffed behind the back seat, where she said she'd put them.
Charges of forcible rape were filed against the two men on Monday the 28th. At their preliminary hearing on May 12, Elaine, the main prosecution witness, identified the defendants as her attackers and testified to the facts in the case much as she had related them in the immediate aftermath of the incident. The defense grilled her on cross-examination, trying to find discrepancies in her story, and she was finally led crying and screaming from the courtroom. At the conclusion of the hearing, the defendants were bound over for trial in the circuit court and, at the urging of prosecutor Lyndon Sturgis, held without bond. Sturgis announced that he would seek the death penalty for both defendants in the case.
Defense attorney Bob Yocum sought a change of venue for his clients, saying they could not get a fair trial in Greene County because of all the publicity surrounding the case, and the motion was granted, with the trial being moved to Christian County. The defense was granted a separation, and Shay's trial got underway in December. At the start of the trial, Sturgis announced that he was no longer seeking the death penalty. Elaine Hale again testified as the main state witness, repeating the story she'd told previously. For the defense, Shay took the stand to tell his side of the story. He denied raping Miss Hale but admitted having consensual sex with her, and he claimed Roberts had nothing to do with the incident.
Shay was found guilty and sentenced to 35 years in the state prison. A motion for a new trial was denied.
At Roberts's trial in June 1959, defense attorneys attacked Miss Hale's character. They got her to admit that she'd first met Bobby Shay when he picked her up on the streets of Springfield and that she'd allowed herself to be picked up at least one or two other times. She also admitted that she and Shay had been kissing in the back seat before the alleged rape. As for their client, the attorneys said, Roberts had not even had intercourse with Miss Hale, much less raped her.
In closing arguments, the state said that not only did the evidence, such as Elaine's bloody mouth, indicate a forcible attack but that it came down to a matter of logic and reason. Who were you going to believe? It took courage for Miss Hale even to testify, and why would she testify to anything but the truth? The defendant, on the other hand, was highly motivated to lie in order to try to save his own skin. After the jury was already in deliberation, the judge granted a defense motion for a mistrial because the prosecution had drawn attention the fact that Roberts's wife had declined to testify in her husband's defense and because Miss Hale was allowed to sit on the front row sobbing and wiping her eyes in full view of the jury.
After the hung jury, charges against Roberts were dropped. Then, in October 1960, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the verdict in the Shay case on a technicality and ordered a new trial. Prosecutors subsequently dropped charges against Shay, too, because Miss Hale, the complaining witness, had moved to California and did not want to have to go through the ordeal of another trial.
So much for the death penalty that was originally sought by the prosecution. Instead of dying in the gas chamber, Shay served less than two years behind bars for the alleged rape of Elaine Hale, and Roberts got off scot free.
Note: This is a case that I considered writing about when I was researching my most recent book, Lynchings, Murders, and Other Nefarious Deeds: A Criminal History of Greene County, Mo., but I ultimately decided not to include it in the book, at least partly because of the rather anticlimactic ending to the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment