Free Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice by Bill Lueders

thought she and Dominic had a good relationship, although he drank too much and got jealous.
    Woodmansee asked when Dominic last stayed over, before the rape.
    Misty said it was the previous night. Two of his roommates, including Slim, had dropped Dominic off at her place around 3 a.m. “He was completely out of it,” Misty recalled with a laugh. “He was dazed, like he had drank six bottles of tequila.” Dominic slept until about 10 a.m., long after Patty had left for work. He and Misty did a cleaning job late that morning and knocked off by early afternoon, because he was so hung over. Dominic planned to come over again that night but never did. The next morning, from the hospital, Misty called Dominic at his mother’s place. His sister woke him up.
    “Was the door unlocked?” Dominic had asked. Misty said it was, and he got angry, saying “I’m sick of this shit.” This, she explained, was his way of expressing concern for her well-being. “He’s always told me to lock it since we’ve been dating. He knows the door is unlocked and it bothers him.”
    Misty called Dominic on his cell phone later that day to give him an update, and he stopped by Mark’s house that evening. He did not speak to Patty except to say, “How you doing?” Misty was upset that people at Mark’s place were “drinking and laughing and having fun,” given that her mother had just been raped. “I was pissed off,” she said.
    Woodmansee proceeded to ask intimate questions about Misty’s relationship with Dominic. When was the last time they had sex? It was the night before this interview, at his house. Did he have herpes? Yes, and currently had open sores. What type of contraceptives did they use?
    “Class Act” condoms, which come in a blue wrapper. Did they ever have anal sex? No. Woodmansee asked Misty to describe Dominic’s penis when erect. It was normal size, perhaps a bit smaller, and not unusually thick or thin.

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    Perfect Victim
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    Misty would later say she was offended by these questions. It was a reaction Patty anticipated, having herself endured a marathon encounter with Woodmansee’s inquiring mind. In fact she had told him, when they spoke that afternoon, that Misty didn’t like to be asked a lot of questions. But Woodmansee didn’t perceive any umbrage on Misty’s part, and later put Patty’s warning on his list of reasons, saying, “She did not want me to ask detailed questions.”
    During Misty’s interview, Dominic called twice. Woodmansee asked to speak to him and set up a meeting at police headquarters. He left Misty and headed downtown for a face-to-face with Dominic. He arranged to have a more experienced detective, Linda Draeger, sit in on this interview.
    Draeger, then forty-four, was a twenty-year department veteran with sharp instincts and a no-nonsense approach. She had a reputation for being abrasive; other members of the department, she once boasted, considered her a “bitch.” But she was also seen as one of the department’s best detectives. During the past decade she had worked on a dozen murder cases, a third of Madison’s total. Her triumphs included helping nail a young Madison woman named Penny Brummer for the 1994 murder of her gay lover’s best friend. There was no physical evidence connecting Brummer to the crime; her conviction was based on circumstantial evidence, including an alleged nod of her head when detectives accused her of involvement. Draeger also played a key role in sending away seventeen-year-old Darnell Hines for a drug-related killing in 1995. Again, there was no physical evidence tying Hines to the crime, but Draeger persuaded a woman who earlier said she hadn’t seen a thing to admit, and later testify, that she watched Hines shoot the man at close range. Draeger was so pleased when the verdict came back as guilty that she wept and hugged the prosecutor in court. “There was never a doubt in my mind” that Hines was the killer, she said at the time.