Witnesses Contradict Webb Rape Testimony : Ex-Boyfriend Disagrees With Her Version of Sex Encounters as Clemency Board Ends Its Hearing

Gary Dotson’s marathon clemency hearing concluded Saturday after key elements of Cathleen Crowell Webb’s recantation were contradicted by several witnesses, and the state’s attorney’s office argued that her story was “simply not believable” and that Dotson’s alibi “doesn’t cut it.”

Later, the Prisoner Review Board, which heard 19 hours of testimony over three days, met in closed session to consider the case of Dotson, 28, of suburban Chicago, who has spent the last six years in jail for a rape that his former accuser now says never occurred.

The panel will make a secret--and non-binding--recommendation to Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson, who attended the clemency hearing, led the questioning and even called Dotson’s mother as an unscheduled final witness Saturday to give her what he called “the last word.”

Spectators Applaud

“I just know my son is innocent,” Barbara Dotson said. Then, as the spectators applauded, she walked to her son and they embraced.

“It’s in the hands of the board,” Thompson said as he left the packed auditorium.

The hearing was the most extensive yet in the bizarre case, which has captured the nation’s attention since March, when Webb, a 23-year-old mother of two living in Jaffrey, N.H., announced that she had lied about being abducted by Dotson and two other men on July 9, 1977.

She now says that she made up the story of being raped by Dotson in the back seat of a car and that she even tore her clothes and injured herself to back her accusations because she was afraid she was pregnant from having sex with her boyfriend. Webb says she feared that her foster parents would find out and order her out of their home.

Webb’s Testimony

In the week preceding the alleged rape, Webb testified, she and the boyfriend had sexual intercourse. They usually used interruption as a method of birth control, she said, but on that one occasion they did not.

But the boyfriend, David Beirne, now a 25-year-old Air Force senior airman in Utah, testified Saturday that, although he and Webb frequently had intercourse during the summer of 1977, he had always interrupted the act. And, although Webb said she and Beirne had intercourse “a few days” before she fabricated the rape story, Beirne said that it had to have been at least a week before July 9, 1977.

Among other contradictions to appear in testimony Saturday:

--Anna Carroll, a police officer who met with Webb shortly after a police car discovered the crying and disheveled girl, said that Webb described the incident that night and again the next day. Webb testified earlier that she had not given officers details of the rape until two days later because she had to have time to fabricate the story.

--Marge Janota, a childhood friend of Webb, said Webb told her that she once dropped a tray of food at the restaurant where she worked because she thought she saw the man who raped her. Under earlier questioning, Webb said she had never told anyone she thought she saw the rapist at the restaurant.

--A state forensic expert said he had found sperm on the vaginal smear taken from Webb on the night of the rape. However, Dr. Andrew Labrador, the examining physician at the time, testified that he found no evidence of sperm in Webb’s vagina.

The governor has the option of denying the petition, commuting Dotson’s sentence to time served or pardoning him based on “a substantial likelihood” of innocence.

‘Selective Memory’

The state’s attorney’s office cited Webb’s “selective memory,” elements of her story that “defy common sense” and Dotson alibis that “are not believable” as reasons it opposes a pardon. A commutation would not be appropriate either because “if he’s guilty, he’s guilty of a pretty vicious crime,” Assistant State’s Atty. J. Scott Arthur said.

Convicted rapists in Illinois serve, on average, less than the six years Dotson has served since a jury found him guilty in 1979, according to testimony by the state director of law enforcement.

Thompson has not hinted at his decision, but he did say that the scientific evidence “does not prove that Dotson commited the rape, nor does it exclude him.”

That would leave Webb’s testimony and Dotson’s alibi witnesses. One of those alibi witnesses said Friday that she knew Dotson was in her home with other friends at 8:30 p.m., about the time of the rape, because she was watching “Love Boat” on television. But later testimony indicated that “Love Boat” did not premiere until two months later.

Thompson asked the state’s attorneys: “What possible motive is there for Cathleen Crowell Webb to recant and put everybody--and I mean everybody--through all this?”