All happy families are alike, wrote Tolstoy, but unhappy ones are unhappy in their own way. Perhaps none was unhappier last Thursday than the family of Eileen Franklin-Lipsker, who took the stand in municipal court in Redwood City, Calif., to accuse her father, George Franklin Sr., of sexually molesting and then beating to death her best friend, Susan Nason, in her presence more than 20 years ago. When Franklin-Lipsker, now 29, first made that stunning disclosure last November, it broke open a case that local authorities thought they would never solve. Her story was credible enough for police to arrest Franklin, 50, a retired fireman and real estate agent, for first-degree murder and hold him on $2 million bail. Since then, the Franklin family has split apart. One of Franklin-Lipsker’s three sisters distrusts her. Her brother, George Jr., will take the stand against her in their father’s defense. Eileen’s mother, who divorced George Sr. in 1975, is said to be “100%” supporting Eileen. The case against the father rests almost entirely on the daughter. Thus, much like a rape victim’s, her character and credibility will be on trial when a jury determines what her father did on the afternoon of Sept. 22, 1969, when Susan, 8, did not return home from playing. Two months later, Susan’s decomposed body was discovered near Crystal Springs Reservoir. Did little Eileen Franklin actually see her father murder Susan and repress it for two decades? Could her mind be playing tricks on her — or worse, could she be getting revenge on the father who once doted on her but abandoned her when she was 14 to go live with another woman and her children? As Franklin-Lipsker took the stand to tell her story under oath for the first time, she looked utterly normal, an attractive California suburbanite reminiscent in her demeanor and tightly pulled-back hair of Maureen Dean sitting primly behind her husband John during the Watergate hearings. Father and daughter avoided looking at each other. But when Eileen sheepishly admitted that she considered undergoing hypnosis for weight loss , George Franklin smiled and tried to catch his daughter’s eye, as if he saw for a moment his pudgy little girl, not the accuser who sent him to prison. Franklin hardly looks the part of the monster, as he sits not 20 feet from his daughter. When he was arrested, he looked like evil incarnate: barrel- chested and menacing, with his long hair brushed up into points. Since then he has lost 40 lbs.; he is now well-coiffed, and has donned steel-rimmed glasses. When she told her tale, Franklin-Lipsker became otherworldly, retreating into herself, a child of eight again, riding along in her father’s Volkswagen van. As she now remembers that day, they stopped and offered a ride to Susan Nason, who lived five houses away. The two girls piled into the back to bounce on the mattress until her father pulled off the road near the reservoir and joined them. Eileen got into the front passenger seat; when she looked back she saw her father holding Susan’s hands above her head, “on top of her, her legs spread apart . . . with pelvis against pelvis . . . and Susan saying, ‘Stop, no, don’t.’ “
