The Queer Case of Luke O’Donovan
By: Meredith Talusan
Tags: Crime, Long Reads, LGBT

I found Luke’s decision to plead guilty more believable when I saw Judge Markle’s bias. I could see the judge trying to exclude relevant evidence, and manipulating the trial so that Luke would have the greatest chance of being convicted.

Still, something nagged at me about Luke’s decision to accept the plea, something about the charming poise he exuded throughout the proceedings. His support website posted a video of him inviting supporters to come to the court house for his hearing. He winks at the camera at the end, and one of his friends asked me later, “Don’t you think that’s the cutest thing?” Yes, yes it was, and that disturbed me. I didn’t want to feel like Luke was flirting with his supporters, with me, while I was trying to figure out the truth.

After the trial, I called Cheryl Mainor’s office but they said she was still in Atlanta. So I sent her a Facebook message asking if I could interview her.

She wrote a vehement reply, questioning why I would be writing about the case and repeating her belief that media coverage injures the men and their families. She ended her message with: “It is my opinion that Mr. O’Donovan is a sociopath, and dangerous, as he has already issued a statement of his innocence, after pleading guilty, making a mockery of the justice system, and further hurting those he wounded.”

I wondered whether someone who expresses herself with this much self-assurance could be fundamentally mistaken, and my interactions with Luke were already raising red flags in my head about the degree to which he was culpable. My conversation with Cheryl left me with further doubts about Luke’s version of the story.

Luke’s mugshot

Cheryl’s major contention was that Luke’s friends, led by Erin Connolly, made up the self-defense story after the fact. That was the reason, she said, why stories in the local news that claimed Luke had been attacked only surfaced two days after the incident. The injuries to her son and the others were extensive, while Luke’s didn’t even need to be treated at the hospital. And according to Cheryl, his mugshot doesn’t even look like someone who’s been through a beating like he claims.

I had seen the picture Cheryl was referring to, but I didn’t make the connection until then that because this was Luke’s mugshot, it was the one piece of photographic evidence about his physical state that night. And it was true that while the other men had to be extensively treated, Luke seemed fine and didn’t show obvious signs of a savage beating.

When I asked Cheryl how she would account for the great numbers of Luke’s supporters, she said, “Those people weren’t even at the party. My son and his friends were there. They were the ones who got stabbed. You know how one person convinces another and then another and then another, and pretty soon they’re all convinced even if it’s not actually true? I think that’s what’s happening. I think Luke is fooling everyone.”

Cheryl also told me she would put me in touch with people who could confirm her claims, including the men themselves, but she never did. My efforts to contact the Atlanta police and the attorney general’s office also went unanswered, and I didn’t have time to knock on people’s doors before I left town.

But this conversation with Cheryl left me feeling like I might be among the ones that Luke and his friends could be duping. I was aware, the whole time I was looking at the case, that Luke’s supporters were meeting together at an undisclosed location I wasn’t invited to. And my major sources for the story were people that Jerry had put me in touch with, the same people that both Cheryl and Judge Markle deemed unreliable. I had to take a good look at myself and ask whether my own bias was clouding my judgment.

I had already made significant sacrifices to stay for Luke’s trial. I had no steady job for the summer and barely any cash, so renting a room for two extra days in Atlanta threatened my ability to get back home. I also delayed my departure by two days, compromising the stories I was supposed to be working on in New Orleans and Dallas. And I was suddenly faced with the possibility that these sacrifices were for the sake of a bunch of queer anarchists who were fooling me into writing a story supporting Luke, a story that serves their purposes but may not be the truth.

After this conversation, I called one of my contacts from Luke’s support team to let them know I was investigating some of Cheryl’s claims, and that I should probably be less in touch so that I can maintain a modicum of journalistic objectivity.

“That worries me,” my contact said. “It doesn’t sound like you’re on our side.”

This reply didn’t make me feel better about the possiblity that Luke’s supporters were conspiring to put out false information about the case. I was starting to feel stupid for getting involved. I called my own partner Josh to let off steam. Like Luke and Erin, Josh and I seemed straight but were both queer. Like them, we get involved with other people.

Josh comforted me the way partners do, telling me it was fine and that whatever happens, we would figure things out, and that I won’t regret working on the story. Josh is one of those people who doesn’t process information the way most people do. Rather than looking at all the dimensions, he tends to focus on a key part and distill what to him seems vital. And this time, he said something that made me think about the case in a way I hadn’t before:

“Does it really matter if he’s innocent?”

The one source I didn’t get directly from Jerry was Madison Hall. We had trouble meeting in person because she lived an hour away from Atlanta, so we spoke on the phone several times. She describes herself as an acquaintance of Luke’s who happened to be leaving the party when he pleaded with her to stop her car and help him get away from the men who were chasing him.

From the start, Madison was incensed at the media’s portrayal of the case, especially because she also knew Andrew Mainor and was aware of the group’s homophobia. She told me she wasn’t surprised when the men ended up attacking Luke.

An Instagram photo Madison Hall sent me of the interior of her car following the incident. The bloody handprints on the bottom right were of Luke when he came into the car and sat on the passenger’s lap, before getting into the back seat.

Contrary to Cheryl’s claim that the self-defense story did not appear until at least two days after the party, Madison told me she filed a police report that same afternoon, which I was later able to obtain. In it, she wrote that Luke’s first words when she got into her car while being chased by a gang of men were “Please don’t stop please. Keep going. They’re trying to kill me!”

Madison told me that the officer who took her statement kept interrogating her about her sexual orientation. And even though the police claim to have investigated both sides of the story, no one followed up with her about her report.

It took us some time, but Madison also helped me track down Toby Weston, a friend’s date who ended up riding with her in the back seat of her car that night. Toby did not know either Madison or Luke prior to the incident, and had not interacted with anyone associated with the case until I talked to him.

Toby corroborated Madison’s version of events. He said that Luke was really shaken when he got to the back seat. “I just told him to hang in there,” Toby said. “I covered the stab wounds on his back with my hand so he wouldn’t bleed.”

He also said that as he and Madison were waiting in the hospital, a friend of the men who might have suspected them of being Luke’s friends, came up to Toby and yelled, “What are you looking at, faggot?” To avoid a confrontation, Toby and Madison left the hospital prior to Luke being released. It was only later they found out that he had been arrested.

When I asked Toby why he didn’t file a police report, he said that he called the police two days after the incident, told his story, and asked if they wanted him to come in. The police said someone was going to get back to him, but they never did.