“But this happiness was not destined to last.”
More stock footage. A night scene of police officers outside a small white house, the red lights of their cars flashing. “Shortly after that picture of their children was taken, Consuelo’s lover told her he’d fallen in love with another doctor at the hospital where he worked. She was the daughter of a prominent local surgeon, and he was planning to marry her after they finished their training. A neighbor, alarmed by the violent arguing and threats Consuelo was screaming, called the police. They arrived just as the door of the house burst open and her boyfriend ran out, pursued by Consuelo—a long, sharp butcher knife held high in her hand.
“Perhaps loving her daughter ‘not wisely but too well,’ Consuelo’s mother used her influence and money to bail her out of jail. But as soon as she was free, Consuelo betrayed that trust—and ran away. No one knows where she went for the next year and a half, or what she did.
“After Consuelo disappeared—a fugitive from the law—her lover abandoned their two children, relinquishing custody of them to her mother. For the next seventeen months that woman lovingly raised the children in her own home. Then, with his new wife insisting that it was the right thing to do, the children’s father changed his mind. Telling Consuelo’s mother that he and his wife loved the children, that it would better for them to have two parents, he finally convinced her to give them back to him.”
Another filmed vignette. The small white house at night again, this time brightly decorated with flashing multicolored lights, a plastic Nativity scene in its snow-dusted front yard.
“Then, on a foggy Christmas Eve, several months after her ex-lover was married, Consuelo returned to the house they’d shared.”
The scene dissolved to the interior of the darkened house. The camera, simulating an eye-level point of view, moved furtively past the tall Christmas tree in the living room. It stopped in front of a door. A woman’s hand reached out and opened it. Illuminated by a lamb-shaped night light, a small dark-haired girl and her little brother slept peacefully in their beds. Both wore smiles of angelic innocence, as visions of what the morning would bring danced in their heads.
The hand pulled the door closed and locked it. The camera moved swiftly to another bedroom. There, a man and woman slept tightly entwined on their bed, unaware.
Then the camera showed the actress from the bar scene. She held a long sharp butcher knife in one hand. Her eyes blazing with rage, she plunged it down again and again, its gleaming blade dripping ever more heavily with blood. After a few muffled screams, the night was again silent.
Nonchalantly dropping the knife, the woman returned to the living room. She piled the gaily-wrapped packages on the floor closer to the Christmas tree, then splashed them with fluid from a can labeled “Gasoline.” A cigarette lighter flashed in her hand. The tree burst into flames—
Video of somber-faced individuals stepping carefully in the charred remains of the house early Christmas morning. One of them picked up a small stuffed dinosaur, a few patches of purple still showing on its singed covering.
The scene dissolved to Peggy Sue’s face. “When the firefighters arrived, they found Consuelo Lopez sitting on the sidewalk outside the burning house, watching it collapse like a funeral pyre. Clutched in her bloodstained hands was this picture.” She held it in front of the camera. It was the photograph they’d shown before of the two smiling children.
A quick shot of Todd’s face. “What happened next, Peggy Sue?”
The picture of a gray-walled prison appeared. “Consuelo’s lawyer tried to get her off by pleading ‘not guilty by reason of insanity.’ But that desperate ploy was undercut by Consuelo’s confession in court that yes, she killed them, and she was glad she did! She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.”
Consuelo’s head jerked up. It sounded like the front door closing. Before she could decide whether it was her imagination or not, the TV program caught her attention again.
Peggy Sue’s face showed outrage. “But it’s possible that, someday soon, Consuelo Lopez will walk free among us again. Recently a group of doctors have tried to reopen her case. They claim she was ‘mentally ill,’ not fully responsible for her actions—and not just someone who deliberately, methodically, cold-bloodedly committed a vicious and senseless crime. No, these doctors say she had a ‘neuropsychiatric defect’—whatever that is—when she brutally murdered her former lover, her rival for his affections—and her own children. And that they have a ‘cure’ for it.”
A familiar face came on the screen. The caption at the bottom said, “A. F. Young, M.D. Psychiatrist.”
Anna said, “Ms. Lopez has always been genetically predisposed to development of a variant of borderline personality disorder. For most of her life, it was like a hidden time bomb, with no sign of its presence—until the right type of stresses set it off. But now we know enough about this kind of mental illness to cure it permanently, so she would never feel compelled to hurt anyone who ‘abandoned’ her again.”
Dr. Young’s voice faded away, replaced by that of Peggy Sue. “But is that really true? Was Consuelo really programmed, like a robot, to kill? Or was it her own evil choice? Let’s hear from a real expert, with more impressive credentials.”
A gray-haired woman appeared on the TV. Her caption read “M. T. Aguilar, M.D., Ph.D. Professor of Psychiatry. Author of many books on personality disorders and criminal psychology.” Reflexively Consuelo looked at the nearby bookcase, and noticed the books she expected to see were missing.
Her face harsh and severe, the gray-haired woman said, “It would be wonderful to think Consuelo could be ‘rehabilitated’ just by giving her the right kind of medicine. There is, I admit, a chance the experimental treatment planned for her could work. But what I’m afraid will happen is the doctors treating her will let their good intentions impair their scientific objectivity. They’ll see only what they hope to see, and pronounce her ‘cured’ when she really isn’t. She’s already demonstrated a conscienceless insensitivity to the suffering of those who loved her. It would not be beyond her capabilities to calculatingly pretend she was ‘well’—until, at a time of her convenience, she was ready to kill again.”
The older woman’s voice turned threatening. “However much one might wish to help her, the first priority must be to make sure Consuelo never hurts anyone else—ever again. If that means she must stay in prison for the rest of her life—or even more drastic measures—then that’s what must be done!”
Peggy Sue said, “And what about Consuelo herself? How does she justify what she did?”
Another video clip. Consuelo recognized the interview room in the prison. She saw herself sitting defiantly in a chair, sneering at someone offscreen. A voice—Dr. Young’s—asked her, “Why did you kill Jason and his wife?”
The woman in the chair took a long drag on a cigarette. “That son of a bitch used me. I did everything I could to make him love me. And what did he do? He dumps me for a ‘nice, respectable girl.’ ‘Somebody I can marry,’ he said.”
She sneered. “A slut who was spreading her legs for him when I couldn’t, because I was having and taking care of his goddamned kids!”
“But why did you kill the children?”
The woman’s face softened. “Well, what kind of life would they have had? No father. A mother in prison, or maybe dead in the gas chamber. They’d never be able to escape that shame—abandoned by their own parents. How could they possibly grow up happy? It was better that way. Quick, just a moment of pain and suffering, and not a lifetime.”