Free Red Mist by Patricia Cornwell Page B

KILLER LOSES FINAL APPEAL
    A woman convicted and sentenced to death almost nine years ago for the grisly slayings of a Savannah doctor, his wife, and
     their two young children was denied an emergency stay today by the Georgia Supreme Court, clearing the way for the execution.
    Lola Daggette was convicted of breaking into Dr. Clarence Jordan’s three-story mansion in Savannah’s historic district during
     the early-morning hours of January 6, 2002. According to the prosecutor and police, she attacked the thirty-five-year-old
     physician and his thirty-year-old wife, Gloria, in bed, stabbing and slashing them repeatedly with a knife before proceeding
     down the hallway to their twin son and daughter’s room. It is believed that five-year-old Brenda was awakened by her brother’s
     screams and tried to escape by running down the stairs. Her pajama-clad body was found near the front door. Like her parents
     and her brother, Josh, she had been stabbed and cut so savagely, she was almost decapitated.
    Several hours after the homicides were committed, eighteen-year-old Lola Daggette returned to a nonsecure halfway house, where she was enrolled in a residential program for
     substance abuse. A staff member discovered Daggette in the bathroom, rinsing bloody clothing. DNA later connected her to the
     murders.
    With the high court’s action today, all of Daggette’s state and federal appeals and habeas corpus issues have been exhausted,
     and her execution by lethal injection at the Georgia Prison for Women is expected to take place in the spring.
    In other articles I skim, her defense counsel claimed she had an accomplice and it was this person who actually committed
     the homicides. Lola Daggette never entered the Jordan mansion but was to wait outside while her accomplice committed a burglary, her lawyers said. The sole basis for the defense was the alleged
     existence of an accomplice who has never been physically described or identified, someone who borrowed a set of Lola’s clothing
     and afterward instructed her to dispose of it or clean it, possibly with the intention of setting her up to be charged with
     the crimes. Lola never took the stand, and I can see why a jury would have convened less than three hours before finding her
     guilty.
    She was set to die this past April but was granted a stay after a botched execution resulted in a second dose of deadly chemicals
     and it took twice the usual time for the condemned to die. As a result, a federal judge blocked the executions of Lola Daggette
     and five male inmates at Coastal State Prison, asserting that he needed an opportunity to decide whether Georgia’s lethal
     injection procedures place the condemned at risk of a prolonged and painful death, thus constituting punishment that was cruel
     and unusual. Georgia executions are supposed to resume this October, with Lola Daggette’s believed to be scheduled first.
    I sit in the van in the rain, baffled. If Lola Daggette didn’t commit the murders but knows who did, why would she protect
     the real killer all these years? Months away from her execution and she’s still not talking? Or maybe she is. Jaime Berger
     has been in Savannah. She’s interviewed Lola Daggette. Possibly she’s interviewed Kathleen Lawler, with whom she may have
     made promises of an early release, but how is any of this the jurisdiction of a Manhattan assistant DA, unless the Jordan
     homicides and possibly Dawn Kincaid somehow connect to a sex crime in New York City?
    More to the point, if Jaime has any interest in Kathleen and her diabolical daughter, Dawn, why wouldn’t Jaime have contacted me? Apparently she just did, I’m reminded, as I look at the tiny
     piece of creased paper on the seat next to me, and I then think of the violent events of this past February, when I was almost
     killed. There was no break in Jaime’s silence. She didn’t call. She didn’t send an e-mail. She didn’t check on me. While we
     were never close