Cry Rape: The True Story of One Woman's Harrowing Quest for Justice

7. Another Suspect

7 Another Suspect It didn’t take long for Patty to find out what Woodmansee had done. Misty heard from Dominic, who was livid, and confronted her mother. Patty promptly backed down, saying she didn’t think it was Dominic and hadn’t meant to accuse him. A number of things, thought Patty, made Dominic the most likely suspect. These she had discussed with Brenda, who wrote out a list. Dominic knew the door would be unlocked and how to find his way around the apartment. He sometimes came in late, after filling up on booze and drugs. The cologne seemed to match. He had the same skin color. He liked to have Brenda wrap her legs around him during sex, just as the rapist had done, and expressed interest in anal sex. Still, Patty was never sure it was Dominic and was distressed that Woodmansee had confronted him. She had expected police to examine the evidence and make an arrest based on what it revealed. Telling Dominic that she had named him as her assailant and then letting him go was not what she had in mind. As soon as she found out, that Thursday, September 11, she left Woodmansee a voice-mail message expressing her concern. Woodmansee didn’t get Patty’s message right away because he was at Meriter Hospital, talking to the SANE nurse, Jill Poarch. He had her provide a synopsis of her exam, and he viewed the tape of the colposcope that documented Patty’s injuries. The anal abrasion, she noted, looked more like a fingernail scratch than something caused by penile penetration. Woodmansee asked if it could have been self-inflicted. 50 Poarch said this was possible but felt it was consistent with a rapist trying to “gain penetration.” The detective was working on a different theory—that the rape never happened. As Poarch later recalled their conversation, “He felt that there should have been more injury, that he had had some discussion with some other police officers and that they all felt that someone who had been sodomized should be kind of ripped apart, should have more injury. And I kind of laughed and I said, you know, ‘How many SANE exams have they done?’” Poarch held firm, saying Patty’s exam “was consistent with her having been sexually assaulted. A lot of times in a sexual assault you don’t find that people are ripped apart and have a great deal of injury.” Woodmansee asked whether Patty’s other injuries—the bruise to her inner thigh and cuts to her hand, neck, and face—could have all been self-inflicted. “That could have happened,” Poarch replied. “I can’t say that that absolutely did not happen.” But she had no reason to suspect this and felt the injuries squared with what she would expect to find based on the events Patty described. At the end of their talk, Poarch would later say, “I’m not sure we came to a mutual conclusion.” Indeed, they hadn’t. When he returned to his office, Woodmansee received Patty’s voicemail message and called her back. He said he found it unusual that she did not expect him to interview the man she identified as the most likely suspect. She said she was disappointed he had moved so quickly in talking to Dominic. He asked whether she still thought he was the one, and she said yes, especially after talking things over with Brenda. She wasn’t able to identify his voice because “the guy did not use his voice. It was like it was forced, like he tried not to sound like himself.” While Woodmansee had Patty on the phone, he asked her some more questions. When was the last time she had voluntary sex? Patty said it was with Mark about three weeks earlier, during a trip to Sheboygan . When was the last time she changed her bedsheets? About two weeks before the assault. Had anyone besides herself and the man who assaulted her been in the bed since? No. Woodmansee asked about Patty’s injuries. How did she get the cuts on her face? Probably early in the assault, when the intruder held the knife against her. What about Another Suspect 51 • the cut to her forefinger? “He didn’t cut me, I did it,” replied Patty, explaining that this must have happened when...