‘Soul Mate’ Fights to Free Suspect : Professed Psychic Says She’s in Love With Alleged Rapist

Hailey Otis loves Frederick Merrill.

She describes the feeling as a compulsion that overtook her this summer after Merrill escaped from a Toronto jail.

As his life was dramatically reconstructed for national television audiences, and as newspapers reported his escape, Otis came to believe that she and Merrill were soul mates: She, an unemployed Toronto free-lance artist; he, an alleged rapist.

“I would watch the proceedings every night on television,” she said. “I knew our destinies would meet.”

Margo Luhtanen, a friend of Otis in Toronto, remembers the day in the city’s central park when a woman asked them if they had seen the police. Officers carrying assault rifles had run shoulder-to-shoulder through the park, hoping to flush out an escaped criminal.

“They’re looking for Fred Merrill,” the woman said.

“Ooooh,” Luhtanen said. “Frederick Merrill.”

‘Psychic Experiences’

During the days when Merrill was eluding the police, Otis said, she turned to a map at home, advising the man she had never met about which course to take. “Go this way,” she would say. “Go this way.”

Luhtanen, a Toronto social worker, said she wasn’t particularly surprised at her friend’s sudden interest. “She tends to have this sixth sense. She often has these psychic experiences.”

Otis began writing to Merrill in jail. She called his 82-year-old mother in Tolland, Conn., and offered to help. Otis did not believe that Gladys Merrill’s son was guilty of any sexual assaults. Not in Toronto, where he had been charged with forcing a 15-year-old girl to perform oral sex, or in Connecticut, where he had been charged with sexually assaulting a woman in South Windsor.

One day, Otis showed up in a Toronto courtroom where Merrill was scheduled to appear. When she saw him, she mouthed the words: “Please call me tonight.”

The news media began to take an interest in Otis, a platinum blonde with blue eyes. They photographed her and wrote about her. They interviewed her on television.

The media publicized her efforts to gain entrance to the jail. And after talking to lawyers and jailers and encouraging Merrill by mail, Otis was able to visit him for the first time in Toronto July 14. He welcomed her and her offers of help.

Otis then came to believe that his lawyer, David Newman, was not doing a good job. She told Merrill she wanted to intervene. “I said, ‘Fred, game over for Mr. Newman,’ ” she recalled. Not long afterward, another lawyer in Toronto, Daniel Brodsky, received a call from Otis, and agreed to represent Merrill.

‘Very Persuasive’

“It is unusual,” Brodsky said. “She’s very persuasive and has convinced people at the detention center where’s he’s been held that she is looking out for his best interests. And she has received some publicity, too. In fact, one of her most effective vehicles to gaining access to Merrill has been through the media.”

A second lawyer in Toronto, Edmund Schofield, heard from Otis, too. Now, Schofield is representing Merrill in extradition proceedings with authorities in the United States.

Last month, Otis flew to Connecticut to begin her own investigation to prove Merrill’s innocence. His lawyers said they were interested in whatever she might find. They were not able to explain her unusual interest in the case, however.

Otis stayed with Merrill’s mother in Tolland. She slept in his bedroom and wore his prison clothes, from a previous conviction, as pajamas. She gathered his memoirs, searched through telephone books for sources, spoke to David Gold, Merrill’s lawyer in Hartford, Conn., scanned family photographs and conducted interviews with reporters who competed for her time.

‘Quite a Media Event’

Gold said he has had cases before in which women have become enamored of prisoners and came to the courtroom to see his clients. But he’s never seen someone as energetic as Otis has been. “She was quite a media event,” he said.