Published: August 25, 2007 09:09 pm      

Witnesses testify about Pollard's changing stories

ALVA – As witness testimony continued Friday in the first degree murder case against Katherine Rutan Pollard, the defense tried to show that Pollard wouldn’t hurt a mouse.

While cross examining Ron Cathcart, Pollard’s adoptive father, Defense Attorney Larry T. Jordan asked about Pollard’s childhood.

Cathcart testified that she was a loving child and especially loved animals. He recounted one instance when the young “Kathy” found a nest of mice, which he would have normally killed, “but she protected them.”

Still, there were times that Cathcart and his wife appeared to be concerned that Pollard, 32, would hurt her sons, especially her oldest son Logan Tucker, who she is charged with killing.

Cathcart said he and his wife called the Department of Human Services in Woodward 18 times on July 1, 2002, and spoke with a worker there named Regenia Ives because they were concerned about Tucker’s location after hearing various stories from their daughter as to the six-year-old’s whereabouts.

“We were mainly concerned that he was not where she said he was,” he said.

And while Cathcart testified that he could not recall telling Ives about their fears that Pollard would hurt Tucker, Ives said she did.

“He just kept saying over and over that he felt Miss Rutan would hurt Logan,” she said.

Kathy Reilly Link, who came to know Pollard, then Rutan, in 2002 through a neighbor who was friends with Pollard’s boyfriend Michael Pettey, testified that Pollard admitted that her parents were afraid she would hurt Logan.

Link said Pollard admitted this on July 6, 2002 when she came to Link’s home trying to find someone to call the Cathcarts and tell them Tucker was okay.

In response to Pollard’s request, Link said she told Pollard “it would be hard to do. . . probably couldn’t find anybody.”

But that did not keep Pollard from trying. Two other witnesses testified that Pollard also approached them about phoning her parents to tell them Tucker was okay. Pollard told them each a slightly different story about where the boy really was.

Dianna Kirkby Koehn, Link’s neighbor who was friends with Pettey, said Pollard asked her to call the Cathcarts and pretend she was from some mental hospital, where Pollard said the boy had been taken even though Pollard had previously told her DHS took the boy on June 23.

She said because Pollard knew she had an educational background in psychology, the defendant asked her to tell the boy’s grandparents that Tucker was going through a mental evaluation and even asked her to tell them some diagnosis for the boy.

When Koehn refused to make the call, the next day Pollard asked Koehn’s friend Fancie Hamilton to make a similar call, but told Hamilton Tucker was really with his father in North Carolina.

Hamilton said Pollard instructed her that after telling the grandparents Tucker was okay to also tell them any outside contact was not recommended. She also said Pollard told her to hang up if they started asking questions.

But like Koehn, Hamilton would not make the call.

And it wasn’t just her parents that Pollard was asking friends to lie to.

On the same day, July 7, 2002, Pollard also made a call to Kevin Caudell, a man she had met in March 2002 through the Tulsa Singles Line. Caudell said they only went out a couple of times, but they stayed in touch over the phone.

However, he said before that phone call he had not heard from her in a while. Although the phone call started off okay with Pollard asking him about his job and how things were going, he said the conversation switched to more serious things and Pollard eventually asked him to call the Woodward County Sheriff’s Office and pretend he was her brother and Tucker was with him.

Caudell told her no and when she tried to call him again the next day, he ignored her.

Pollard’s story about her oldest son’s whereabouts was not the only thing that constantly changed after the boy’s disappearance. Witnesses said her attitude toward the situation also varied greatly.

A few witnesses testified that Pollard was crying when she told them how DHS workers took Tucker.

However, Koehn testified that while Pollard told her on the same day that she was very upset about DHS taking the boy, “she said she was going to look at him as if he was dead.”

Koehn said Pollard claimed that treating Tucker like he was dead was the only way she could cope with the situation.

Based on testimony given by Jamie Adams, who worked at McDonald’s in Woodward where Pollard also worked for a time in July 2002, she seemed to be living by her statement that she would think of Logan as dead.

Adams said one day in early July 2002, when she was only 15 years old, while waiting for her mother to pick her up, she had a brief conversation with Pollard who approached her while on break.

Pollard began talking about her history and how she moved to the Fort Supply area to be near her boyfriend, Adams testified. She told how Pollard then talked about having recently attended a bike rally with that boyfriend and won second place in the topless contest.

Adams said Pollard also told her “she had one son, he was four years old.”

Tucker went missing on June 23, which is when at one point Pollard claimed DHS workers came to take him away. However, because of her changing stories his disappearance was not fully known by law enforcement until early July when Pollard’s brother Mickey Cathcart contacted the Woodward County Sheriff’s Office to request a welfare check on his nephews.

Mickey Cathcart, who also testified Friday, said he contacted the sheriff’s office because there was an implication that Tucker was with Pollard’s brother in Tulsa, but he was her only brother in Tulsa and did not have Tucker. He said he hadn’t even seen his nephew in several years.

“The last time I saw my nephew, he was three years old,” he said.

As Mickey Cathcart approached and left the witness stand he made sure to take the long way around so he could avoid passing by his sister at the defense table.

As he left he also patted lead-prosecutor Chris Ross on the shoulder.

During his testimony, Mickey Cathcart said that he not only called the sheriff’s office to request the welfare check, but also cooperated fully with the officers. He said he freely handed over phone records and gave a DNA sample. He maintained contact with Sheriff Les Morton and Undersheriff Monte Clem for several months.

He said he agreed to do anything he could to help find his nephew.

Around the same time, Pollard seems to have changed her attitude toward her son’s disappearance once again. To end their testimony Friday, the prosecution showed a film clip taken from a news segment that appeared on KOCO Channel 5 on July 11, in which Pollard also seems to want to do anything to find her son.

Sounding as if she was almost crying, in the clip Pollard claims, “I miss my son. . . I want him back . . . I want Logan back.”