"Despite the enormous risks he was obviously taking, Halsey did very little actual
molesting... he spent most of his time acting like Huck Finn on
a spree..."

The medical evidence

But the greatest barrier to re-considering Halsey’s verdict is the medical testimony. This
lies across the case like the four foot high concrete dividers that blocked off Nobody’s
Road. A.W. testified that Mr. Halsey drove over the dividers to get up to the fields where
he molested them. (561:8) But no such impossible feats are required to deal with the
medical evidence. Two independent medical experts have disputed this “indisputable”
evidence, which in the words of one of them, is “frankly weird.”1

As the prosecutor summed up, “B.W., he’s got the whole bottom portion of his rectum
worn away and a scar that takes up a good part of his rectum, and another serious tear and
a mark indicative of a burn on his rectum or a chunk of skin being taken right out.” The
defense called no medical experts, but the two independent experts, examining the
pediatrician’s testimony and notes, have questioned whether what he described were scars
at all. Suppose that both children had sustained major tearing, burns and flesh wounds.
Suppose that half of B.W.’s rectum had somehow been “worn away.” Could such painful
wounds go unnoticed? Mrs. W. testified that the children came home from school with
mud on their pant legs, but she was never asked, nor did she state, if their underpants were
bloodied or soiled. She mentioned that the twins sometimes strained to move their bowels,
and that when she wiped their bottoms for them, she noticed “redness.” There is no
indication that the children were trying to hide anything from her, quite the contrary. She
testified that when they got out of the bath, they would bend over, spread their buttocks,
and say “see my butt hole.” (It’s worth noting at this juncture that the television characters
“Beavis and Butthead” first appeared on MTV in the fall of 1992, four months before the twins
made their accusations and may well have influenced some children in the Lanesboro Elementary school yard.)

In their initial interview with the school counselor and the police chief, B.W. said Halsey
punched him in the face and A.W. said the bus driver scraped his arm with a knife. These
wounds went undetected by their parents as well.

Opportunity and Probability

Finally, there are questions of opportunity and probability. Cheit says, “there was also
detailed testimony to contradict the (the defense’s claim) that Nobody’s Road was
inaccessible at times.” The defense never made this claim.2 The defense argued that since
the blocks were not placed on the road until January of 1991, then they obviously weren’t
there in the fall of 1990. Yet both A.W. and B.W. said they were. Halsey’s attorney mentioned the blocks in his closing summation only as it related to the children’s credibility. (1900:19-25)

Halsey’s bus route in the year 1990-1991 apparently consisted only of the W. twins and
sometimes a third and fourth child (neither of whom testified). Cheit argues that Halsey
had up to 45 minutes to molest the children. In his initial police report, Police Chief Stan
Misiuk estimated that as much as twenty minutes were unaccounted for. On
cross-examination, Misiuk said that when he drove the route and timed it, he allowed “20
to 25 seconds” at each stop for the five-year-olds to get on or off the bus. (1646)

Mrs. W. told the police chief that the children were “ready” to be picked up at 11:30.3 At
trial, however, she moved the clock back by fifteen minutes or more: “And it was about
11:00 o’clock that they would have their lunch, and it was -- the latest he would ever pick
them up would be quarter after or 20 after, the latest.” (1110:7-10) This change
significantly altered the amount of hypothetical time that Halsey had available to him.

The record shows that most days Halsey was at the school at 11:15 to pick up a child
leaving the morning kindergarten. The prosecutor presented no records from the school or
the bus company to indicate that any parent or teacher had complained about Halsey for
any reason, apart from the “tickling” incident, already described.

In the fall of 1991, the next year, Halsey allegedly tied up as many as five children before
getting down to the business of molesting them one after the other. It strains credulity that
none of the children became hysterical -- that is, no one testified that the children arrived
at home or school with red, tear-streaked faces and duct tape adhesive clinging to their
cheeks. For his mid-morning run, Halsey would have had to pick up the children at school, drive to a secluded spot, tie them up and molest them, untie them, drop them off at their respective homes, and go back into town, pick up other children attending afternoon kindergarten, and deliver them to school -- all between 11:15 and 12:10. This was clearly impossible, so the prosecutor insinuated in his closing remarks that Halsey kept the morning children with him all afternoon on early-dismissal days, which would explain how he had time to dunk the twins in the lake and store them in boxes. (1938:10-18) This supposes that Mrs. W. never noticed when her
children weren’t returned home and that she never paid attention to teacher conference
dates. Shugrue (not surprisingly!) didn’t have the nerve to put this theory to her directly.4

The lake where Halsey caught fish, frogs, turtles and crayfish, is visible from a farm that
had a roadside vegetable stand and petting zoo. If Halsey parked the passenger van,
clearly marked as a school bus, fired his gun at fish in the lake and turtles on the shore,
and whacked the children with baseball bats (573:14-574:7 and 614) -- he would have
been in view of the farm and of motorists passing by on Route 8. (Other acts were alleged
to have occurred on the other side of the concrete blocks, up in the fields and woods
beyond, but a great deal of the children’s testimony is centered at the lake.)

Despite the enormous risks he was obviously taking, Halsey did very little actual
molesting. According to the testimony, he spent most of his time acting like Huck Finn on
a spree -- killing small animals and playing mumblety peg, while the children lay on the
floor of the school bus, their eyes and mouths covered with duct tape, their arms pinned,
wrapped in ropes from waist to foot.5

Halsey did not take the stand in his own defense. His defense consisted only of a few
teachers who testified that the children behaved normally at school and a fellow bus driver
who said that as far as she knew, Halsey’s bus was always where it was supposed to be
(their routes crossed). No expert witnesses were called. It is only a small exaggeration to
say that no defense was offered at all.6

Jumping to Conclusions

Cheit concludes by critiquing Jonathan Harris’s7 inclusion of Halsey in Harris’ witch hunt
website. Among other things, he suggests Harris uses imprecise and emotionally colored
language, unfounded criticisms and the like. Harris’ one paragraph account, which
launches Cheit on six pages of what he calls “close textual analysis,” could hardly be
expected to discuss and rebut all of the evidence brought against Halsey in a nine day trial,
anymore than this article can. For example, Cheit faults Harris for not fully elaborating
what he means by “bogus symptoms.” However, Harris is writing for a educated audience
who understand the controversy around “syndrome testimony” by “experts,” and in fact,
his website has a FAQ section that explains the ritual abuse trial controversies in more
detail.

Harris noted that some of the prosecution team were involved in another ritual abuse case,
that of Bernard Baran. Cheit says drawing comparisons is a “McCarthy-like” tactic. By
using “McCarthy-like” as an adjective, he too is using a type of shorthand -- he expects
the educated reader to know what he’s talking about. Likewise, advocates for the
wrongfully convicted refer to the Salem witch trials, and with good reason. With three
words, we can evoke volumes; we can remind our audience that people, even educated
people and community leaders, can perpetrate great cruelty when their moral loathing of
certain types of crimes overpowers their ability to reason, and that all this has happened
before in our courts.

Lona Manning
May, 2002

click here for Cheit's reaction
to my article:
ManningDebunked.org

click here for my response
to Cheit's website about me

The concrete blocks on Nobody's Road

1 see, inter alia, the Pre-Trial Memorandum filed by the bus company in a civil suit brought
by the W. family.

2 Although Cheit may be referring to 1235-1239, where Halsey’s lawyer cross-examines a
witness about the blocks, to no apparent purpose.

3 “E.W. (the mother) told me that during this year she would feed the boys lunch about
11:00 a.m. and have them ready for 11:30 a.m.”

4 Instead, while making a different point, he says that “the attention that these children had
had (from their parents) was enormous throughout their entire lives.” (1926:16)

5 For testimony about how Halsey allegedly wrapped the ropes around the children, see
587:18-21.

6 In contrast, the lawyers for the bus company in the civil suit disputed the allegations,
engaged expert witnesses, and were prepared to call dozens of Lanesborough citizens
to the stand.

7 Harris, at one time a “visiting associate professor of chemical engineering at MIT,” took
an interest in the ritual abuse mass molestation trials of the late 80’s and early 90’s and
hosts a website on the topic.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Carol Clairmont Weissbrod for her generous research assistance

Bibliography

Author’s interview with Mary Halsey. (The Halseys recently observed their 50th wedding
anniversary. Bob Halsey was 64 at the time of the trial, not 60, as stated by Cheit.) [update:
Cheit has pointed out that he said Halsey was 60 when he was driving the bus. I accept this
correction.]

Timothy Shugrue, the prosecutor, did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.
Other witnesses, including Mrs. W., did not respond to a letter requesting an interview.

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