Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places

Tonia Watson will be back in court this week, tethered and in orange jail garb, sitting next to her boyfriend and co-defendant, Alan Wood, also tethered. Both, police say, are stone cold killers.

I'm not much interested in Alan. In twenty or so years in courtrooms, I've seen plenty of Alan Woods.  There is a coldness, a flatness about their eyes. It sounds like a cliche, I know. But the reason cliches are cliches is that they tend to be relentlessly, boringly true. I saw it in Daniel Franklin, a man who got out of prison and immediately knifed his ex-wife and her two little girls. I saw it with Coral Watts, a serial killer who celebrated his murders by taking himself out to eat at local restaurants. Alan Wood, a convicted sex offender, arsonist, and now accused murderer, has those eyes.

Alan and Tonia, both parole absconders, are charged with first degree murder in the heartbreakingly cruel death of an elderly woman in Royal Oak last Fall. Nancy Dailey was 80 year old when she let Tonia and Alan into her life, paying the two drifters to rake the leaves in her tidy yard. Police say they repaid her by slitting her throat in her kitchen, but not before Alan first tried to break her neck in her bedroom, then dragged her down the hallway by her hair, as she cried.

Nancy Dailey, in one of her final statement to her executioners, said "I tried to help you, you dirty birds," according to a statement Tonia Watson eventually gave police. Tonia, according to police, stood by as Nancy was killed.

On Thursday, the two will be in district court for a preliminary exam to determine if there is enough evidence to bind them over to stand trial. There is. Prosecutors are expected to present DNA tying Alan Wood to the crime scene. That, along with Tonia's statements to police, and the fact that the two were using Nancy Dailey's stolen credit cards when they were arrested two days after her murder virtually assure that the case will go to trial.

Here's what I want to know about Tonia. Who are you? And what will you do now? We know that Tonia is a chronic thief and drug addict. She has almost a dozen prior convictions. She is a heroin and crack user who tested positive while on parole. She has children from different men, some who abused her. She left those children behind when she hooked up with Alan, a man she would insist she loves.

Tonia, if she is eventually convicted, is an anomaly. Women don't generally murder or participate in murders, particularly those of strangers or near strangers. In fact, women kill once for every ten men who commit murder, and when they do, the victim is usually a spouse or close family member, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Another interesting statistic about deadly women. If we do decide to kill you, the method will be something nice and tidy, like poisoning or smothering. No guns or knifes. Nothing messy. Nothing like what happened in Royal Oak.

People who knew Tonia on the streets in the weeks leading up to the killing tell me she was cunning, and much smarter than Alan. That she was likely the driving force that led to the killing, that there was "something wrong'' with her.

Her attorney is likely to argue that she was a mere bystander who had no idea that a killing was in the works. That she was just a woman smitten by a man, a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Prosecutors, as they sometimes do, may be offering her some kind of deal to ensure that the person they say used the knife to end Nancy Dailey's life goes to prison forever. Testify against Alan, describe that horrific afternoon, and you can plead to second degree, and someday walk free.

Testify against your man.

So I've been watching for clues. What will she do? She is a mother, after all. She has witnessed new life - and doesn't that bring with it hope? Doesn't that teach us in some profound way the sanctity of life. Can you cradle a newborn in your arms. then stand by while your lover knifes an old woman? Then go shopping afterward?

Will you testify against your man?

I found a clue in the notes her parole officer kept the day of her arrest, following Nancy's murder.
Tonia was distraught, to be sure. Overcome with grief. Not about the death of a kind old woman who wanted nothing more than to live out her life in her garden, to walk down her quiet street and visit with her neighbors. It was not about that.

Tonia "was worried about how she was going to live the rest of her life in prison."


A legitimate worry, Tonia. That's for sure.