Forget for a
moment that Katherine Chancellor Sterling has already informed city
persecutor Will Bardwell that she kidnapped a baby, switched it with Jill
Abbott's baby, wants to come clean and dig up the grave containing what all
along had thought to be the body of Phillip Chancellor III.
Had Sterling
kept her mouth shut she could have dug the body up, done pretty much what
she wanted with it, and nobody would have been the wiser.
It happens all the time. It happened in 1994 when Victor Newman had Eve
Howard's grave opened. Eve blew into the city in late 1993 when she learned
that her son, Cole, planned to marry Newman's daughter. Eve was sure
Victoria Newman was Cole's half-sister and God would probably frown on
in-breeding. As luck would have it, the moment Eve stepped foot in Genoa
City, she became deathly ill and died before letting others know of her
fear.
Victoria and Cole split for Las Vegas to be wed which angered Victoria's
mother because Nikki Newman had the hots for Cole too. Victor at the time
was clueless that anything was going on except that Jack Abbott was trying
to takeover his company. Besides, Victor had let his family believe he was
dead when all the time he was in Kansas cavorting with Hope Adams. Unable to
contain himself, Victor went home and the first thing he did was to tell
Victoria and Cole, upon returning from their honeymoon, that they were
brother and sister.
The newlyweds accepted the news at face value. Victoria told her mother that
she and Cole had annulled the marriage and gone their separate ways and
Nikki was pleased as it meant she'd be able to go after Cole again.
Unfortunately, for Nikki, Cole didn't want her.
Determined to know whether what he'd told the kids was true, Victor dug up
Eve's body. He didn't need a court order. He didn't need permission from
anyone. He did one foggy night order a crew into the graveyard and following
a blood test it was revealed that Cole was not Victor's son. Lest it wasn't
made clear, Victor and Eve had a history wherein they'd done the horizontal
hoochie a few times.
This should have been good news. So in love, Victoria and Cole jumped at the
chance to re-marry, but she was mad at daddy and refused to invite Victor to
the wedding. He had to sneak into the Chapel of Love and watch from afar.
Without checking the archives, it's not certain if this wasn't the shortest
marriage in Genoa City history. With Cole spending long hours working on his novel and
not on her, Victoria turned her attention to Ryan McNeil but he'd knocked
Nina Webster up and so married her. Nina's miscarriage didn't change anything
as Ryan said he'd always be there for her.
A few weeks later Victoria found out her mother and Cole had hit the sheets
so she dumped Cole and went on to appear in a nude magazine as Miss
September. When Victor found out he bought the magazine, and tried to buy
all the September issues, but it was too late. Victor went on to marry Hope, his
son Nick returned from a Swiss boarding school a horny teenager and took up
with what would become town whore, Sharon Collins, and this gave Victoria
something to do as she hated the little girl from the wrong side of town.
The point, if there is one, is that Katherine blew it. She could have dug
the grave up without implicating herself. She could have hired a forensic
anthropologist to determine who's really in Phillip's grave. She could have
avoided the absurdity today of Bardwell telling her and Abbott that not only
can the bones be dug up, but that Bardwell would do it himself!
Maybe you're like me. You can't see brittle bones Bardwell lifting a law
book much less a shovel and doing the actual grave digging. You can imagine
arrangements being made with the cemetery and a small backhoe brought in to
move the earth and that this might take a week to coordinate so long as
either Sterling or Abbott had signed documents authorizing the dig which, as
far as anyone can tell, they did not.
Because Sterling confessed to a crime, it might be said that Bardwell could
have opened a wrongful death case and thus could have ordered the body
exhumed except that he can't. Not by himself. Not according to law where it
states, "In case of any death, when a body is buried without an
investigation by the medical examiner as to the cause and manner of death,
it shall be the duty of the medical examiner, upon being advised of the
fact, to notify the district attorney or county attorney having criminal
jurisdiction where the body is buried or death occurred. Upon notification,
the district attorney or county attorney having criminal jurisdiction may
file an action in the district court to obtain an order to exhume the body.
A district judge may order the body exhumed upon an ex pârté hearing.
Furthermore, the law states, "A body shall not be exhumed until notice of
the order has been served upon the executor or administrator of the
deceased's estate, or if no executor or administrator has been appointed,
upon the nearest heir of the deceased. If no heirs can be located within the
jurisdiction within 24 hours, the facts shall be reported to the issuing
court which may order that the body be exhumed forthwith."
In other words, not even Victor Newman can snap his fingers and have a grave
dug up. These things take time and even longer when a crime may have taken
place. And yet, within the hour, while Sterling and Abbott were still
sipping the same cups of coffee, when they had not been presented with any
official notification by a court which would have had to approve the exhume
abomination, Bardwell returned to say the grave was opened, presumably DNA
collected, and then closed again!
Without so much as a peep from the ladies, "Gosh, that was fast," the old
hags did get somewhat giddy. Thanks to Bardwell's amazing performance as a
grave digger, they are closer to knowing who's in Phillip's grave.
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