“Good afternoon, Professor Kitchens,” I began. “Is that your real name, Naomi Kitchens?”
“It’s my legal name now,” Kitchens responded.
“You had it changed?”
“A long time ago, yes.”
“What was your given name and what made you change it?”
“My birth name was Alison Sterling. I changed it twenty years ago to protect myself and the child I was carrying.”
I saw her eyes go out to her daughter as she answered.
“Protect the child from whom?” I asked.
“My ex-boyfriend,” she said. “This was back in Pennsylvania, where I grew up.”
“Can you tell the jury why you felt the need to take these steps?”
“Well, he was a bad man. He was committing crimes and I realized I had to get away from him. So I left. I went to California and legally changed my name so he wouldn’t be able to find us.”
“Who is us?”
“My daughter and I.”
“How old is your daughter now?”
“She’s nineteen.”
“And was the man you ran from her father?”
“Yes.”
“Did he ever find you after you escaped?”
“No, he went to jail for many years. Prison, actually.”
“Do you know what crime he was convicted of?”
“Robbery and assault. He shot a man but the man didn’t die.”
“Were you involved in any way with these crimes?”
“No, but… we lived on the money he stole. I knew that. It was one of the reasons I needed to get away from him.”
“Were there other reasons?”
“He was violent. I was afraid he would hurt the baby.”
“What was this man’s name?”
“Quentin Holgard.”
“So if Quentin Holgard came into this courtroom and said you committed these crimes with him, would he be telling the truth?”
“No, he would be lying.”
My last question was a guess. But I had to get in front of any move the Masons might make. They might have Quentin Holgard teed up and ready to go as a rebuttal witness, thereby keeping his name hidden and off the approved-witness list. I didn’t know what the defense plan was but I wanted to be ready for anything. Feeling that I had put what I could on the record, I dropped into my original plan for Kitchens’s testimony.
