Word: podola
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Dates: during 1959-1959
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...Trembling & Twitching." Thereupon the case turned into a pre-trial jury hearing to decide whether Podola had actually lost his memory and so was unfit to plead guilty or not guilty of murder. Detective Albert Chambers, 6 ft. and 230 lbs., testified that to arrest Podola, he "charged [the door] with all my strength," and crashed Podola to the floor, falling "full length on top of him." When Podola recovered consciousness, said Chambers, he had ''a peculiar trembling and shaking and twitching" in his whole body...
...Chelsea police station later, continued Chambers, Podola "looked very pitiful. His behavior was odd." Police Surgeon John Shanahan testified that when he examined Podola then, "it was impossible to make contact with him." Other police doctors told how Podola gradually began to recover, and even to volunteer remembered bits, e.g., a memory picture of a woman called Ruth, and a child called Micky he believed was theirs. Noting signs of Podola's "withdrawal," one doctor said that Podola "liked to keep near the wall when he moved along the corridor." "It is an accepted thing that distinguished scholars like...
...When Podola himself was called to give evidence, he still had traces of a black eye, but he looked calm, perfectly at ease, rather detached. In guttural tones, he answered questions as if the answers bore no relation to his own fate. "Do you know," asked Prosecuting Counsel Maxwell Turner, leaning forward with heavy jowls jutting out, "what is the punishment for capital murder in England?" Replied Podola indifferently: "They told me in prison. Either you get off or"-he let his hand swing down from the elbow-"it will be hanging." And never once was Podola trapped into...
...Belle Indifference. For the defense, Harley Street Neurologist Colin Edwards testified that Podola's patchy knowledge was in no way inconsistent with genuine loss of memory, and that only a man with a specialist's knowledge of rarely seen symptoms could fake Podola's act. Podola, he said, was "normally sane with the exception of memory loss," was suffering from "hysterical amnesia," a condition which can be characterized by "unconscious suppression" of particular memories "due to emotional causes." Might this unconscious suppression "clear up next week?" asked Mr. Justice Davies. "I think not, my lord," replied...
...Podola's were a case of schizophrenia, said Edwards, he would have been 100% indifferent to everything and everybody. But the "Selective" fashion in which Podola could recall certain things from the past tended to confirm that he suffered only from hysterical amnesia. Podola, Edwards argued, was in the grip of what psychiatrists call la belle indifference-a "couldn't-care-less attitude about some things but not all things." As an example, Edwards pointed to the gesture-"absolutely incredible in a man with emotional awareness"-with which Podola had alluded to the possibility of hanging...