Reporter's Notebook: Did Mom's Testimony Help or Hurt Son's Case?

"I will never really know what happened."

Those were the last words uttered on the witness stand Wednesday by the mother of Mark Bukowski, when she was asked for the final time what happened back in 1996, when Father James J. Brennan was alone in his apartment with her son, who was only 14 at the time.

The reason why the defense lawyers in the courtroom w…