Framed

8

Around the same time, David Hanners, a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter with The Dallas Morning News, was digging into Kerry’s case.

Hanner left no stone unturned.

His inaugural front-page story, published on February 28, 1988, was headlined, Inmate Was Railroaded.

This and articles that followed touched on all aspects of the case and included interviews with most of those associated with it, including Smith County law enforcement, defense attorneys, and state witnesses.

Randy Dykes told the reporter that the prosecutor told him what to say and what not to say.

He also swore in a 1991 affidavit that prosecutor Thompson kept yelling at him, insisting he get his story straight.

He continued, “I was just a high school kid and he really had me intimidated.

I decided that I would just tell him whatever he wanted to hear so that I could get out of there as fast as I could.

When I got home, I told my family what had happened.”

His younger brother, Rodney Dykes, while serving a ten-year sentence for drugs and burglary charges, told Hanners the law “put words in his mouth.”

Robert Hoehn had died of AIDS in Dallas on September 12, 1987, but a close friend revealed to Hanners conversations he had with Hoehn on his deathbed.

Hoehn told him that the Cook case haunted him, that he “felt guilty for his role in the Cook conviction,”

that “the wrong man is on death row.”

He swore to his friend that “Cook was never, ever guilty.”

On October 9, 1988, The Dallas Morning News ran another feature story that focused on Collard’s aging of the patio door fingerprint as further proof of prosecutorial shenanigans.

The headline read, Key Testimony in Cook Case Said to Be False.

This article had a far-reaching effect, sparking an inquiry by the International Association for Identification in 1989.

In a thirteen-page response dated May 22, 1989, Collard admitted that when he gave his testimony, he knew that “there was no positive or scientific way that [his aging of the print] could be supported”

and that “no other latent examiner would support such an analysis.”

Nevertheless, when he told A. D. Clark that he had no scientific basis for aging the print, Clark told Collard to offer it as his “opinion.”

Collard objected repeatedly to this but was met with “full and continued resistance”

from Clark.

When Collard finally caved, A. D. Clark was able to use his unrebutted testimony like a magic bullet—first to establish probable cause, then to get an indictment from the grand jury, then to set the terms of Kerry’s bond, and, ultimately, to obtain Kerry’s conviction at trial.

With Collard’s false testimony that the door print was only six to twelve hours old, Kerry hadn’t stood a chance.

In February 1990, Kerry was inspired to write Centurion a sixty-one-page letter in pencil asking for help after learning of our role in Clarence Lee Brandley’s exoneration and release from Texas’s death row after ten years of false imprisonment (“Guilty Until Proven Innocent”).

Hanners assisted Kerry by sending Centurion all the newspaper articles and interview write-ups.

After discussing the case at length with Hanners on the telephone and studying the entire record, I had two lengthy visits with Kerry in November.

I became convinced of his innocence and committed Centurion to his cause.

Believing Mayfield to be a viable suspect, Centurion spent the better part of 1991 doing what the Tyler police had not done—interviewing countless people who knew him—neighbors, relatives, university colleagues, faculty, library staff, and past associates throughout his career stretching back to Coffeyville, Kansas, where he was raised and began his professional life.

We learned that early in his career he had a mental breakdown and would not go out of the house for a year or two.

Elfreide supported the family during those dark days.

The people who knew Mayfield recalled one distinctive characteristic: his explosive temper.

One of his past colleagues likened him to an “electrical capacitor,”

meaning he would build up a charge and then let it go like lightning.

Another likened him to a “volcano.”

Another remembered that Mayfield would “shake with red hot rage”

when his temper got the best of him.

All remarked that he would explode and then an eerie calm would ensue.

Most of those with whom we spoke would not have been surprised if Linda had been the victim of Mayfield’s wrath.

Every woman who worked for him at TEU or at Midwestern University, where he had worked as library director from 1969 to 1973, believed he was fully capable of Linda’s murder.

Shortly before he left Midwestern, nine women who worked for him signed a letter to the university president asking for Mayfield’s immediate dismissal because of his “frequent temper tantrums”

and abusive behavior.

When Linda was killed, the female library staff at TEU had suspected that Mayfield might have been involved.

Even his adoptive son Charley thought Mayfield should be a suspect in Linda’s death.

He told police that, in his view, his adoptive father’s “violent temper”

would have made him capable of such a hideous crime.

He also predicted that Elfreide would “stand by her husband”

despite his mistreatment of her, Charley, and his siblings.

Those who knew the dynamics of the Mayfield marriage understood that Elfreide’s sole purpose in life was to cater to his every whim and domestic need.

She was a devoted and multitalented homemaker who tailor-made Mayfield’s suits from bolts of fabric.

Wanda Joyce, Elfreide’s best friend, recalled that Elfreide “loved him so much that she’d be happy to live under a rock with him.”

Elfreide’s sister told others the same thing.

For his part, Mayfield was utterly domineering toward Elfreide.

He ruled his home with an iron hand.

Whatever he wanted, he got.

According to the female TEU library staff, “he ordered her around like a martinet,”

and she was his “doormat.”

Elfreide suffered in silence at his verbal abuse as well as his constant philandering.

Wanda Joyce thought that Mayfield had “cracked, that he went crazy and killed [Linda].”

Elfreide never told her that, but she did visit her the week after Linda’s death.

She looked “drawn and upset,”

and told Wanda, “They think Jim did it, but we’ve all taken polygraphs and passed.”

She added that “the stress is unbearable.

It is all a nightmare.”

But Elfreide stood by him through thick and thin.

Ultimately she saved his life as his alibi witness, a debt he owed her until the day he died on July 12, 2019.

Mayfield’s executive assistant and successor at the library, Olene Harned, offered insight into Mayfield’s mindset in the days before Linda’s killing.

Mayfield loved his job and his life at the university and on Lake Palestine, she explained.

After moving around every three to four years in his twenty-year career, he felt he had finally found his niche and landed a position of respect and standing.

At age forty-four, he hoped to remain dean and director of the TEU library for the rest of his career.

According to Olene, when Mayfield was fired, he was devastated.

He blamed Linda for “ruining”

his career.

He told Olene that he and Elfreide had decided to move to Houston and pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.

Elfreide had family there.

He was afraid Linda was going to follow him to Houston: “If she does, I’ll never be rid of her.”

Yet Olene knew the truth was more complicated.

Mayfield was equally obsessed with Linda and couldn’t stay away from her.

He was exhausted by the consequences of the affair and wanted to break it off with her.

But he couldn’t muster the will to do it.

It was apparent to Olene and the other female library staff that Mayfield’s sexual appetite for Linda had torn him and his family apart and destroyed his professional life.

His secretary, Sophia Lenderman, recalled that “it was common knowledge Jim wanted to get rid of her, that he was tired of the relationship.

He talked of giving her up, but somehow couldn’t because he was sexually addicted to her.”

On the morning Linda was killed, Mayfield arrived at work an hour early, a little after 7:00 a.m.

Waiting for him was library staff member Ann White.

She had just received a phone call informing her that Linda had been “badly beaten.”

He insisted that Ann drive him to the Embarcadero.

While they sat in the car looking at the police activity outside the apartment, rather than express concern for Linda, Mayfield angrily exclaimed how she had “ruined him, cost him his job, and caused a lot of problems for him.”

Late Friday afternoon, after he had completed his police interview, Mayfield went to see Chad Edwards, a friend and university music professor, at his home in Lake Palestine.

During the several-hour visit, he “came unglued, just crying and crying,”

and waited until dark for the police to come and arrest him.

Close to another nervous breakdown, he returned home to the all-forgiving Elfreide.

On Monday after the murder, he came into the office and told Olene he had failed a privately administered polygraph commissioned by his lawyer, and would try again.

He was shaking and crying, with “tears dripping down his chin.”

Olene realized he was “scared to death for his own hide.

It was not grief for Linda.”

He told Olene, “I’m scared to death that I’m going to be implicated in her murder.”

In addition to interviewing Mayfield’s family, colleagues, and associates, Centurion spoke to people who were close to Linda.

Coworkers said that, in the days after her suicide attempt and just before her death, she told them that she was “having problems with Mayfield”

and vowed that she was “going to get him back no matter what.”

Wednesday, June 8, Linda’s second-to-last day on earth, was also Jim Mayfield’s birthday.

He turned forty-four.

That morning, Linda dropped by his office and gave him a set of bells that, ironically, she said brought good luck and would ward off evil spirits.

Sophia Lenderman remembered how adoringly, almost worshipfully, Linda looked at Mayfield that morning.

That lunch hour they spent alone in Paula’s apartment.

Linda showered him with gifts, including a new tennis outfit, cologne, socks, and a painting done by Linda.

According to Mayfield in an early deposition, they only “necked.”

That evening, Linda went to her art class from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

, and then spent an hour or so chatting alone with her art teacher, Gloria Coughenour, a woman twice her age.

In the two and a half years that Gloria had been Linda’s art teacher, she had become Linda’s friend and confidante.

Gloria was aware of Linda’s history with Mayfield and the trouble it had caused for everyone involved.

That night, Linda seemed excited that her brother-in-law had gotten her a job in Baytown, some twenty-five miles east of Houston, where he and Linda’s sister, Carolyn, lived.

It was Gloria’s impression that Mayfield did not fit into Linda’s plans, that Linda was starting anew and had let Mayfield know about this and her move to Houston.

Coughenour was not aware that on the next day, June 9, Linda had a job interview lined up at a local Tyler bank.

No one, except maybe Mayfield, knew exactly what Linda’s real intentions were.

—

In April 1990, Kerry lost his father, Earnest, to cancer.

His grief put him in a deep funk.

But then came good news a year and a half later.

On September 18, 1991, the CCA reversed Kerry’s conviction and ordered a new trial.

The court had decided that Dr.

Grigson’s testimony was in fact both inadmissible and harmful to Kerry in convincing the jury of his future dangerousness in the punishment phase.

A technicality, yes, but an opportunity for freedom after fourteen years of dangerous and brutal confinement.

Scott Howe had accomplished his mission.

He also knew he now needed to step aside.

His strength was as an appellate attorney, and Kerry needed a trial litigator for this second trial.

Scott and Kerry asked me to help them with the selection.

I suggested Paul Nugent in Houston.

I had worked with Nugent and his partner, Mike DeGeurin, in freeing Clarence Brandley from death row.

Nugent was delighted to take on the case and agreed to represent Kerry pro bono.