Posted on 08/11/2007 6:16:41 AM PDT by Daffynition
ORLANDO, Fla. — Impatient. Defensive. Emotional. Incoherent.
Astronaut Lisa Nowak is all of these things in a four-hour video, released today, of her stay in a holding cell immediately after her arrest at the airport here in February.
As officers come in and out of her cell to give her something to drink or take her to the restroom, Nowak seems frustrated and bewildered by repeated questions implying her intentions toward her romantic rival Colleen Shipman, an officer at Patrick Air Force Base near Cape Canaveral, Fla., were more than just to talk.
After her arrest on charges of attempted kidnapping of Shipman, officers found a knife, BB gun and garbage bags among other things in her car. Police say Nowak drove from Houston to Orlando and followed Shipman in the middle of the night to a parking lot at Orlando International Airport and sprayed her with pepper spray.
"I guess I didn't think there was anything to get caught. I just wanted to talk to her. I just thought once we talked she'd understand why I was there," she says shakily as she stands at the doorway of her cell. "I didn't want her to run off as soon as she saw me."
At the start of the video Nowak is calm but impatient. Dressed in a dark, oversized jacket, dark pants and dark shoes, her hair in a ponytail, she in turn paces the cell and stands at the door. She keeps an eye on her watch and repeatedly asks officers how much longer she'll be held. She wants to make a phone call about her children, she says. Officers refuse but offer to make the call for her. She declines.
Eventually she begins to unravel. She lies on the floor in a fetal position, her back against the door. She gets up, and officers bring her something to drink. She seems to say she feels dizzy, and they offer to bring her food. She asks for an apple.
"Do you know where you are, what city you're in?" one officer asks. Her response is inaudible. "You seem like you're kind of out of it," he replies.
"I've been awake for a long time," she replies tearfully.
Another officer brings her an apple, and she begins to eat.
"What's going on in your mind right now?" an officer asks.
"That I'm going to be locked up forever," she replies in part, tearfully.
"Did you think about what you were doing when you were doing it?" he asks. Nowak's response is tearful and mostly incoherent.
Eventually, seemingly revived by the apple, she and the officers discuss her relationship with Bill Oefelein, the astronaut who was at the center of the love triangle. (The Navy eventually transferred Nowak and Oefelein out of the NASA astronaut corps).
She says she doesn't want to say too much because she doesn't want other people to get in trouble. She continues to push for a phone call and makes clear she doesn't want NASA to find out about her arrest.
She discusses with an FBI agent whether documents in her car involving the shuttle are classified. She says they aren't. And the conversation turns back toward her intentions for Shipman.
"I didn't have a plan. I just gathered things. I didn't have any idea what I was going to do with them or show them or anything like that," she says. "I certainly couldn't have used any of them, and most of them were too scary to think about. I just wanted to have something. Please just stay here and talk to me for a few minutes."
Nowak, a 44-year-old mother of three, wore diapers to avoid bathroom breaks during her drive from Houston to Orlando, according to police. Her attorney denies it.
Nowak's trial on the kidnapping charges and other alleged crimes is scheduled for Sept. 24.
Under Florida law, much of the evidence against her, including her interrogation by a police detective, already has been made public.
They're Pampering her.
Brief Reactive Psychosis
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