Derek Simmons’s call to Joseph Wieder after Anne’s death

Derek Simmons’s call to Joseph Wieder after Anne’s death was a calculated attempt to control the danger gathering around him: Derek warned that he could expose Wieder’s alleged affair with Anne and invoke his own psychiatric history to pressure the powerful professor into helping him. The call’s trace on the records later gave Roy Freeman a route into Derek’s account of the morning Anne died.

The Call and Its Immediate Purpose

On the morning he said he had found Anne’s body, Derek called Wieder, whose home number he had previously discovered while searching through Anne’s belongings. He told Wieder that the police would probably make him their scapegoat under the circumstances. If Wieder refused to help, Derek threatened to pull him into the case by revealing that he and Anne had been lovers.

Derek’s threat was not limited to exposure. He reminded Wieder that he had once been admitted to a mental hospital and argued that Wieder could use his professional standing to arrange an insanity finding and commitment to a forensic psychiatric hospital. The proposed defense turned Derek’s psychiatric history into leverage: he was not simply asking Wieder for an expert opinion, but presenting the affair and the prospect of scandal as reasons Wieder should intervene.

Why Derek Used His Own Phone

The call was a risky choice. Years later, when Freeman challenged him about it, Derek explained that he had not wanted to leave the house because he feared being seen. He also needed to reach Wieder quickly and did not know whether the arriving patrol would arrest him immediately. His fear of being observed thus led him to use his home telephone, creating a trace that could eventually be examined.

That trace initially led nowhere. Wieder had only recently bought his house, and its telephone number had not yet been transferred into his name. The previous owner, Jesse E. Banks, had died, and the property had been sold through an estate agency. Police checking the calls could not connect the number to Wieder, so they abandoned the lead. At the time, even identifying Wieder would not have made the call seem relevant to the case.

The Call as Evidence in Freeman’s Confrontation

Freeman later returned to the overlooked telephone record and used it to confront Derek with the timing of the call. He challenged Derek’s account of reconstructing his past after the hospital attack, then pressed him on why he had contacted Wieder on the very morning he said he had discovered Anne’s body. Derek first asked whether Freeman was wearing a wire. Once Freeman denied it, Derek asked how he had found out about the call, exposing how much the old record had revealed.

Derek acknowledged that he had called because he was afraid and needed to speak to Wieder before the police arrived. His account connected the call to an earlier knowledge of the alleged relationship and to a deliberate effort to make Wieder responsible for helping him. The overlooked record therefore did more than establish contact: it put pressure on the story Derek had told about that morning and opened the way for his fuller account.

Aftermath and Irony

Derek was eventually accused of murdering Anne, found legally insane, and committed to Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. Wieder visited him there, presenting his involvement as professional interest and promising that Derek would be transferred to the better conditions at Marlboro Hospital. Before that transfer could happen, another patient attacked Derek, leaving him in a coma and with severe amnesia.

Afterward, Derek no longer recognized Wieder as the man he had threatened. He remembered him instead as a caring doctor who offered treatment and help. The call’s significance consequently extends beyond its role as a clue: it records a moment when Derek tried to make Wieder complicit, while the later loss of memory transformed that same relationship in Derek’s mind.