Three hours later, he called again. This time the FBI traced it. The call was coming from a garage seventeen miles away. SWAT surrounded the building within minutes.
But when they breached the door, they found something nobody expected.
“Please, Robert, please don’t do this,” she was sobbing. “Please, you saved me. Don’t leave me now.”
The SWAT team froze. This wasn’t a kidnapping. This was something else entirely.
“Drop the weapon!” the team leader shouted.
Robert looked up. His face was destroyed by grief. Tears streaming into his gray beard. “Just let me explain to the judge first. Let me tell her the truth. Then I’ll do whatever you want.”
I pushed through the SWAT officers. “Robert? Robert Mitchell?”
I recognized him now. He’d been in my courtroom dozens of times over the years. Not as a defendant but as a victim’s advocate. He ran a nonprofit helping abused children. Former Marine. Sixty-one years old. Lost his own daughter to violence twenty years ago.
“Your honor,” he said, his voice breaking. “I need to tell you about David Chen. About your verdict yesterday. About what really happened to that little girl.”
“You’re threatening my daughter over a verdict?” My voice was shaking with rage and fear.Continue reading…
