Page 1, The New York Times
The prosecution agreed to drop one of the 48 counts, noting it was a duplicate charge, but the backdown was a pyrrhic victory for Phoenix. After a two-day committal hearing, John Wilkinson decided Hampel’s jurisdictional argument didn’t hold water and on 14 August 1991 he committed Phoenix to stand trial in the County Court.
By the day of Electron’s committal, in March, Electron’s father had begun his final decline. The bowel cancer created a roller-coaster of good and bad days, but soon there were only bad days, and they were getting worse. On the last day of March, the doctors told him that it was finally time to make the trip to hospital. He stubbornly refused to go, fighting their advice, questioning their authority. They quietly urged him again. He protested. Finally, they insisted.
Electron and his sister stayed with their father for hours that day, and the following one. Their father had other visitors to keep his spirits up, including his brother who fervently beseeched him to accept Jesus Christ as his personal saviour before he died. That way, he wouldn’t burn in hell. Electron looked at his uncle, disbelieving. He couldn’t believe his father was having to put up with such crap on his deathbed. Still, Electron chose to be discreet. Apart from an occasional rolling of the eyes, he kept his peace at his father’s bedside.
Perhaps, however, the fervent words did some good, for as Electron’s father spoke about the funeral arrangements, he made a strange slip of the tongue. He said ‘wedding’ instead of funeral, then paused, realising his mistake. Glancing slowly down at the intricate braided silver wedding band still on his finger, he smiled frailly and said, ‘I suppose, in a way, it will be like a wedding’.
Electron and his sister went to hospital every day for four days, to sit by their father’s bed.
At 6 a.m. on the fifth day, the telephone rang. It was the family friend their father had asked to watch over them. Their father’s life signs were very, very weak, fluttering on the edge of death.