Free Bad Boy From Rosebud by Gary M. Lavergne

totaled) a blue Ford Mustang. 17
The most anticipated event of the trial was the five-hour testimony of Roy Dale Green, which riveted the courtroom and the press corps assembled from throughout the nation. Spectators must have been shocked and surprised at the difference between preconceived notions made about Roy Dale, based only on news accounts, and the young man who took the stand on November 9, 1966. He shook as if he had been locked in a refrigerator. He constantly shifted in his chair and was unable to control his arms. Under comfortable circumstances, Roy Dale's speech was inarticulate; in the courtroom he could barely communicate. "He was scared out of his gourd of McDuff," said Butts. At times he groped for words, and towards the ends of sentences his voice faltered to an inaudible level. Oddly, however, it strengthened his credibility. "Anybody could look at him and tell he was telling the truth," Butts said of his star witness. 18
Under cross-examination, Godfrey Sullivan further demonstrated Roy Dale's cognitive shortcomings, his utter lack of courage, and thus the stunning contrast between the pitiful youth on the stand and the emotionless predator behind the defendant's table. When Sullivan asked the obvious question, why didn't Roy Dale just drive away and escape the horror and make some attempt to help Robert, Marcus, and Louise, Roy Dale could only stutter a painfully inadequate response: "I . . . I . . . I just don't know." 19 Had Roy Dale said anything else he might have given jurors some reason to suspect deception.
On Saturday, November 13, 1966, just when the spectators of the courtroom thought that the trial could not get any more dramatic, Godfrey Sullivan announced, "If the court please, the defendant would like to take the stand in his own behalf." 20 What Charlie Butts had suspected came to fruition; Kenneth's arrogance was beginning to lead to his downfall.
According to Kenneth, during the Broomstick Murders, he was asleep at a burned out shopping center in Everman. In direct contradiction to what the jurors had seen for themselves only a day or two before, Kenneth described Roy Dale as angry, frustrated, and determined to look for girls. "Roy was very mad because he hadn't got a date. He wanted me to wait someplace while he used the car. We argued. He was real mad. I was just tired and wanted to go home and go to bed. I just sat down beside a wall and went to sleep," Kenneth testified. He added that it was Roy

 

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Dale who kept the broomstick because he had trouble with "some boys." The contrast between the assertive, determined Roy Dale Green Kenneth described, and the one the jurors had seen whimpering and shaking in the witness chair, was dramatic. 21
Kenneth had never grown up. He still believed that whatever he said was the truth and others had to believe itbecause he said it. He was still entering the principal's office with a baseball glove covered with black shoe polish announcing, "look what I found in a ditch." He made no mention of protecting the reputation of a church-going girl, and thus, he had either lied to Addie or Addie created the story she told to newsmen. To compound the debacle, Godfrey Sullivan asked Kenneth under direct examination, about being in a "little bit of trouble" in the past. In doing so, he made it possible for the prosecution to introduce Kenneth's past extraneous offenses.
In order to emphasize Kenneth's icy presence, Doug Crouch selected Charlie Butts, with his deliberate, gentlemanly manner, to cross-examine Kenneth. On the night before his cross-examination, Butts spoke by phone to a number of sheriffs and police chiefs throughout the Blackland Prairie.
Years later, Charlie Butts remembered the next day. Shortly into his cross examination, Butts calmly said something like: "Now, Kenneth, let's talk about the 'little bit of trouble' you've been in."
As Butts slowly dismantled Kenneth, he began to squirm. Each time he was caught in a lie or