Marcus Wesson: Control, Incest and Murder

Elizabeth Wesson

"How can I protect them if they didn't tell me? They never told me anything," she told the court.

When the girls' bellies started to swell, she said didn't ask who the fathers were. Her excuse? Her own mother had 10 kids with three different men and her sister had seven children with various men — she considered it "mean and rude" to ask about fathers, she told the courtroom.

On the witness stand, Elizabeth Wesson looked at her husband before speaking, as if for direction, and was scolded for it by Gamoian. She covered her face with her hands, sobbing under the prosecutor's rapid fire questioning, and several breaks were called to allow her to regain her composure.

The publicity from the case had made her the object of ridicule and had torn apart her family, Elizabeth Wesson said; she often was forced to sleep in her car.

Gamoian depicted Marcus Wesson as a master manipulator who brainwashed his daughters and nieces into thinking it was normal to have sex with him. He limited their access to education and the outside world until he had complete financial, physical and emotional control over their lives, she said, and convinced them that death was preferable to police interference with the family.

The women's brothers, who were segregated from their sisters at an early age and left home long before the murders, also spoke out about their father in court.

Almae Wesson, a son of Wesson's.

Adrian Wesson, 29, was also suspicious.

"The (babies) looked like my father," Adrian told the jurors. In particular, they'd inherited Marcus Wesson's distinctive pug nose.

Another son, Dorian, 30, called his father "insane" because he thought he was Jesus Christ and believed in vampires, but also described him as highly intelligent.