Calling the state's argument for doing so “intellectually bankrupt,” defense attorney Mike Sherwood asked District Court Judge Kim Christopher for a mistrial after prosecutor Dan Guzynski attempted to introduce into evidence copies of three letters that Candace Guill was allegedly forced by her husband to write.
Christopher had suppressed the original letters during pretrial motions, ruling they fell out of the scope of a search warrant issued for the Guill home outside Heron, in the far western reaches of Sanders County.
Sherwood said because Guzynski attempted to introduce them in front of the jury - which Christopher quickly sent out of the room before hearing arguments on Sherwood's objection - and Christopher then ruled the copies could not be introduced, the jurors would now know three letters existed that the defense did not want them to see.
While agreeing with Sherwood that copies of the letters could not be introduced, Christopher denied the motion for a mistrial.
The legal brouhaha interrupted several hours of testimony from Candace Guill, the prosecution's first witness in the case against Douglas Guill, who is accused of raping and sexually abusing the couple's daughter over a 16-year period, beginning when the girl was 6 years old.
Douglas Guill is charged with two counts of incest, two counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.
In a soft and often breaking voice, Candace Guill described her life with Douglas Guill, who she married 10 days after meeting him at a Christmas Eve party in 1972.
It was a nomadic life, she said, as the couple bounced around various locations in Idaho, Washington, Wyoming, California and Montana.
They bought, but lost, homes in Boise and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, she said, moved in with both their parents at one time or another, and at one point lived in what amounted to a plywood crate barely large enough to contain a mattress on top of a mountain in north Idaho, with no electricity or plumbing.
“All through those years, he wanted me to go to bed with different guys,” Candace said, and she eventually did with her husband's friend, Rick Christensen.
“You do what Douglas says,” she said. “You don't argue with him.”
Eventually, she said, her husband joined them in bed.
In 1980 or '81, she testified, the couple joined Amway.
“They have church services with their rallies, and Douglas felt Jesus was calling him to accept Christ,” Candace said.
He calmed down for a while, she said, but eventually came to believe that God was speaking to him, and his wife and family had to do as he said. The family's many moves were always precipitated by a message from God that they should do so.
“He said God was head of man, and man was head of women, and we had to do what he said, whether it was right or wrong,” Candace said.
Not long after the family moved to Heron from Casper, Wyo., in 1991, Candace said, two things happened.
The heating and air-conditioning business her husband started with Rick Christensen made the family's financial condition better for the first time in years.
And Rick's sister Nicole, about 20 years their junior, moved in with them.
Sherwood painted a much different picture during his opening statement.
“This is clearly not a whodunit,” he told the jurors. “It's a did-it-happen-or-didn't-it.”
Douglas Guill is a man who stuck by his family even after his marriage ended in everything but name only, Sherwood said. He is now the victim of a mother and daughter who wanted revenge after he told them that now that his children were grown, he intended to leave everything to Nicole, who has lived in the Heron house with them for about 16 years.
Candace's affair with Rick Christensen devastated Douglas, Sherwood said, and while he eventually came to terms with Christensen, he ended intimate relations with Candace - but still promised to take care of her and the children.
In 2005, Sherwood said, Douglas Guill suffered a stroke and heart problems.
“He was pretty much knocked out from late June until October of 2005,” Sherwood said. “At that point, he told Candace and the kids he'd lived up to his end of it, and if he died, things would go to Nicole. That's when things started happening.”
There was increasing hostility between Douglas Guill and Nicole Christensen, and Candace and the two children (the couple also has a son), according to Sherwood.
Eventually the stress got to be too much for the daughter, Sherwood said, and - worried it was affecting her father as well - she left home at the age of 22.
She left her father a note, Sherwood said, explaining that.
The attorney said it also said, “Dad, I love you,” and “I will always be your little girl. Hopefully we'll meet in heaven.”
“Douglas was devastated,” Sherwood said.
Once relocated in Sandpoint, Idaho, Sherwood said, the daughter talked about her family situation but never mentioned sexual abuse until a couple helping her confronted the woman about another issue.
“At this time, she comes up with this new story of sexual abuse,” Sherwood said. “It's the first time anyone has heard it.”
On the stand, Candace Guill testified about life in Heron.
After Nicole arrived, Douglas forced her to sleep in the same bed with him and his new girlfriend until “I couldn't handle it.”
Why didn't she object from the outset? Guzynski asked.
“He made me feel it was God's will,” Candace answered.
Douglas and Nicole moved into an outbuilding called the storehouse, which contained a hide-a-bed and woodstove, but only for a week or two, she said.
“He told me, ‘I don't need to be living out here. This is my house,' ” she said. “So he moved me to the storehouse.”
She stayed there for several years while the family built a new home. There was no plumbing, and when Guzynski asked her where she went to the bathroom, Candace Guill replied, “I had a can.”
Candace was later allowed to move into the unfinished portion of the basement of the three-level home the family built.
The woman broke down when she told of one incident where she claimed her husband told her he could hit her in the face, she'd fall to the floor, hit her head on the concrete, “and I'd be innocent.”
She mowed the lawn in the summer, shoveled snow in the winter, cooked dinner for Douglas, Nicole and the two children, built a greenhouse, and tried to home-school her children - although Douglas continually interrupted to play with the children, or put them to work.
“I didn't dare sit still,” she said. “He'd get mad.”
Candace and the children could only leave the property with Douglas' permission, she said, and it didn't come often - maybe twice a year.
Why did she and the children stay?
“We were too scared to leave,” Candace said. “Douglas always taught us that anyone who didn't follow him would go to hell.”
After their daughter left, Douglas finally granted her a divorce, but only if she signed away her right to anything - which included the new home and property, a cabin near Clark Fork, Idaho, two lots in that community, property at Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and about eight vehicles, including late-model Cadillacs.
“He said he'd leave (the children) alone if I give him everything,” she said.
She and her daughter now live in Sandpoint, she said.
The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Wednesday at the Sanders County Courthouse.
Reporter Vince Devlin can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at vdevlin@missoulian.com.
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