The following is the entirety of James’ testimony.
Q. James, can you please state your name and address for the record.
A. James Allen Hanson, 271 Hurd Street, Milan, Michigan 48159 — or, 160, sorry.
The first zip code he gave is that of his grandparents. Thus, I suspect that he had probably only recently moved. This address is a house, but I cannot imagine he saved up enough money to buy it; I suspect he was renting part of it.
Q. And how old are you?
A. 29.
Q. And how are you related to Rita and her children?
A. Nephew and cousins.
Q. And what do you do for a living?
A. I work at a Plastic & Molding factory.
Q. And how long have you been working there?
A. Two-and-a-half weeks, my new job.
Q. Can you — let’s just get right into the timeframe here. Did you have the opportunity to live with Rita and Mr. Mockensturm?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. For how long?
A. I got there in ‘04, November or October of ‘04, and stayed with them for a long time, like a few years.
Q. Tell us when, until when?
A. First period was like ‘07, and then I got my own place, and then I got sick, and they let me come back.
Q. Okay.
A. And then I stayed with them until I moved back here.
Q. And when you came in 2004 — this is why I’m not a doctor — you were how old?
A. 21.
Q. So you’re 21 years old, and you move in. Why initially are you coming to move in with them?
A. I didn’t really have any plan for my life at first, and they had the shoe store stuff going on, and I was going to help them with that, and then November, Rita broke her legs, so I initiated just helping her out, and then I started working at a pizza place right next door to the shoe store.
As I stated before, my understanding from Rita was that he would save money to purchase tools.
Q. Well, let’s talk about the — the shoe store is kind of throwing us all off. What’s the shoe store piece of it?
A. Small Feet [sic] Footwear, it’s a business they started.
Q. Who’s they?
A. Aunt Rita and Uncle Eric.
Q. So they started this shoe store business. How long did that go on?
A. Five years probably.
Q. They basically were giving you a job, right?
A. Pretty much. I mean, I worked at the shoe store pretty much for a whole year at the one location, and we moved it to a different location.
Q. Now 2004, who’s around, Caleb and Amanda?
A. Yes. They were little.
Q. Can you just briefly describe for the Court, based upon your personal observations having lived there for a number of years, what you observed Mr. Mockensturm’s interaction and help with the kids was like?
A. Well, I know he wasn’t very active in their outside of the house playtime. I was more like the outdoor person.
James played with the kids outside quite a bit, but I also recall playing with them outside the house a lot, doing things like pushing them on the swing, pushing them in the stroller, taking them to the park, etc.
Q. What about inside?
A. He was on the computer, usually sat on the couch. Well, when I first got there, the recliner that was upstairs is where he used to sit. Rita and I hardly ever seen him when he got out of work. He would sit upstairs in the recliner and on the computer until he went to bed, upstairs, and then he had to change because the recliner started deteriorating, and then he came downstairs, and then he finally threw it out. Then he started staying downstairs because the recliner was going upstairs. Then he would just sit in one spot on the couch, and then the other couch that was in the other room, he would just transfer from one room to another occasionally.
This statement annoys me as it’s completely untrue. I have no idea what James is talking about with a recliner deteriorating. Even if I sat in a recliner while home awake every day for years, I doubt it would deteriorate to the point that we’d throw it out. James broke a few pieces of furniture because he’d flop his 600 pounds down on a chair not designed to support that much weight.
I also have no idea what he’s talking about me transferring from one room to another. None of this makes any sense. I will admit that I worked a lot at home because I was trying to get tenure and keep the shoe store afloat. I was doing all the accounting and payroll for the store and the vast majority of the advertising. James also mentions us moving the shoe store but does not mention that I spend months building shelves for the new store.
Q. Are we talking working on the computer for an hour or two?
A. It would be hours, most of the night.
Q. What about during the day?
A. He would — like, the weekends or the week days?
Q. Well, let’s talk about —
A. The week days, he would be at work or class teaching, whatever he was doing. I don’t know; I don’t baby sit him. I’m just saying from what I could see at home when he got out of work, he’d go upstairs, do his thing, bathroom, get a snack, sit down. Aunt Rita would start making dinner, and then we’d just sit there until I decided to get the kids outside because it was boring in the house. In the summertime, it was nice out.
I was positively not working most of the night. I have never been a person that can function with little sleep. I’m surprised he didn’t accuse me of sleeping all the time because when he first moved in, doctors had not diagnosed my sleep apnea, and I was tired all the time. I love the “teaching class or whatever he was doing” thing. One thing that none of Rita’s family ever understood because none of them had gone to college was what a professor at a major research university did. They acted like all I needed to do was teach a couple of classes and that I could do nothing during the summers. Rita understood a bit because she’d been with me through graduate school, but I don’t think she ever really understood. She wanted it just to be a job for me. Unfortunately, being a professor will never be just a job, or you won’t be a professor very long.
I will admit that I didn’t do much cooking initially, but we did have traditional roles. Plus, Rita always seemed to want to do the cooking. She told me quite a few times to get out of “her” kitchen.
Finally, it’s just hilarious that James says he’s the one that was motivated to do things. He sure didn’t have a lot of energy for doing tasks besides eating for the small amount he worked.
Q. Now, you last — and what you just described, is that pretty — is that representative of —
A. Everyday life there, yes.
Q. Now, you’ve heard the testimony here from some individuals thus far, and you’ve heard that Mr. Mockensturm has suffered from depression.
A. Yes.
Q. Have you observed Mr. Mockensturm in these periods of depression?
A. Yes, I have.
Q. What do they look like?
A. Dark, dark, like you — I couldn’t even talk to him. It was very — like a blank sheet of paper.
The thing is, James did not even see me during the worst episodes, and by the time he moved in, things were pretty much under control. I would have a few bad days here and there, and the last person I wanted to see during that time was James. I don’t recall ever really interacting with him while I was depressed. Doing so would have just caused me more anxiety. If I was giving James a blank stare, it was because I presumably couldn’t comprehend the idiotic thing he’d just said.
Q. And how long would these — based upon your personal observations, how long would these depressive episodes last?
A. Like a month or so, depending what he feels like. I just kind of like try to avoid him when he’s in that period of time.
Q. And how often did you see this happening?
A. At first, only like a few times, but it started to seem like it was every winter.
Again, this is untrue. The first couple of episodes did indeed last for months, but after I realized I needed to take my medicine, they would never last for more than a couple of days. What makes no sense is that I was teaching classes during this entire time. There’s no way I could do that if I was functioning, as James describes. At some point, I just started to avoid James altogether. The stuff he would do was just infuriating. It seemed like everything he touched went to shit.
I remember him getting mad at me when I told him not to park directly in front of the shoe store when he was working there. Employees do not park near the store at every business I know, leaving those spaces for the customers. Plus, when there are always kids involved, it is essential to make getting them into the store and out of the parking lot as quickly as possible. I later learned that James was mad because he believed I thought his beat-up truck was an eyesore.
Q. Beginning when; can you give me a year?
A. Like during ‘05. Like, I’d see it gradually, and then it started like every year in the fall when school started. I think he was just getting like overwhelmed, but you know.
Q. Did it involve anything other than —
A. No.
Q. This blank sheet that you
A. No, just what he would show. Like, that’s all I could see.
Q. During those periods of — well, just for lack of a better word, these depressive periods of time, did you notice or observe a marked difference in his interaction with the children?
A. Maybe about the same or a little. He wouldn’t show hardly any love to them, if you think about it.
Q. Now, did you see him — and I apologize if I asked this, bathing the kids?
A. No.
Q. Helping with Amanda’s medical care?
A. Not really.
Q. Okay. What does “not really” mean?
A. Like, not at all.
Q. So —
A. Probably twice I’ve seen him do it.
Q. When Amanda was how old?
A. Probably six years ago; probably like five.
James acts like he is always around to observe things. The fact was, he spent most of the time in the basement playing video games or watching movies. James didn’t help around the house much, and his work almost always needed to be redone. I would ask him to do things that I thought there was no way he could mess up, and then he would find a way.
Why is Tonia so worried about if I helped bathe the kids? I did on occasion but bathing them is not a two-person job. None of the bathrooms were that big, even to have two adults trying to wash the kids. Plus, Rita would give me Amelia while I was showering almost every weekday morning so she could deal with Caleb and Amanda. She would do the same regularly with Amanda and Caleb when they were young. Clearly, James never saw this.
Q. Who would typically assist Rita with that kind of help if she needed it?
A. I would be the second person, but initially she wouldn’t be comfortable at first because she didn’t know if I knew everything, but I really didn’t. I just knew what ring you had to pull and how to do it, and Amanda told how and explained it to me. Because she knew a lot, you know, for a five-year-old, amazing. But she’d make me call Aunt Rita immediately. If Aunt Rita wasn’t around, and she wouldn’t change her pull-up, she would wait to see if Aunt Rita would make it in time. She wouldn’t have anybody do it, even if Eric was upstairs.
As I’ve said before, Rita had Amanda convinced that Rita was the only one that could adequately care for her. I changed plenty of diapers and pull-ups, which Amanda wore until she was at least 13. As she got older, she didn’t want any man doing it, and assuredly not James. I felt pretty uncomfortable changing Amanda during the trips Rita took in 2012; Amanda was 11.
James was also definitely not the second person to help unless I was at work. I don’t recall James ever going to the hospital with us when Rita couldn’t get the catheter into empty Amanda’s bladder in the middle of the night. I honestly do not recall James helping Amanda, and I can’t imagine Amanda would even have allowed it.
Q. Now, you testified that you were there from 2004 to 2007, correct?
A. Yeah, and then I got my own place.
Q. You got your own place where; here in Pennsylvania?
A. In Pennsylvania, in a trailer park. I was kind of forced out, because he –
Q. Who’s he?
A. Eric, Uncle Eric kind of had a meltdown because I lost a cat, because I stayed at the shoe store because they rented the house out for a football weekend, and I couldn’t keep control of the black cat they had. He was a pain.
I certainly didn’t make him move out because he lost a cat. I recall two incidents with James concerning our cats, and none of these involved the shoe store. The first was when Cole ran away while staying with James at his trailer. Cole was an outdoor cat, so I wasn’t shocked that he might run away. I was surprised that he showed up at our house on the other side of town months later. It’s possible that Cole ran away from the shoe store and not from James’ trailer, but I’m not sure why James would have had him at the shoe store.
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