When Ramos first saw GraBois, his mouth automatically curled into that familiar half smirk he seemed to save just for the prosecutor. Jose Ramos liked to tell people GraBois was obsessed. GraBois himself bristled whenever the term was used. He himself thought obsession was pursuing little boys to violate their bodies; it was following them home from school, dating mothers to get to their kids. GraBois had no doubts about who was obsessed.
For a brief moment, the two men stood regarding each other through the glass windows separating them. Then Trooper Portzer stepped forward and snapped on his handcuffs. “Jose Antonio Ramos,” said Portzer, “you’re under arrest for involuntary deviate sexual intercourse in Warren County, Pennsylvania. You have the right to remain silent,” he continued. As Ramos was read his rights, he turned white, the smug look replaced by one of total shock.
Then, when he was finally brought through that last door and within earshot, GraBois couldn’t help himself. As Ramos was led past to the waiting patrol car outside, the prosecutor leaned in to whisper, “I told you so.”
CHAPTER 18
On the Record
Ramos was arrested at Rockview State Correctional Institution at approx 0945 hours and then returned to Warren Co by these two officers and Agent Larry GERRARD of State Attorney Gen’ls Office. Upon return to Warren Co ACCUSED RAMOS was arraigned before Dist. MAG. Dalton E. HUNTER… and committed to Warren Co Jail in lieu of $1 million bail…. PRELIMINARY HEARING was set for 07/17/90 at 1330 hours. [postponed to 8/15/90]
—July 13, 1990, Supplementary Report of Pennsylvania state trooper Daniel L. Portzer on Jose Ramos, July 10, 1990, re arrest
A month after that first trip to Warren, Stuart GraBois was at the airport again, early as usual. He was flying to Pennsylvania a second time, for Jose Ramos’s preliminary hearing, but this time he wasn’t alone. He was watching his traveling companions from across the waiting area in front of the gate and trying to control his temper. He could understand the stares—he was getting used to them by now. If Barry Adams didn’t stand out enough with his braids and leather ensemble, or his propensity for exhorting total strangers to love each other, when he whipped out that flute to play Native American songs of healing, he got everyone’s attention. No, it wasn’t the raised eyebrows that upset him. It was the attitude.
Up until this point, GraBois realized, it had been clear to everyone else that he—the man in the well-tailored suit—was part of this group, but now he suddenly got a sense of what the others faced when he wasn’t around. Adams and Joe Taylor Sr. were trying patiently to get the gate attendant’s attention, and from what GraBois could see, neither one of them looked “normal” enough to rate it. He noted the woman’s apparent disdain as she ignored the two men, one shabby, one cosmic, asking their polite questions. It was as if they didn’t exist.
GraBois approached the counter in time to hear the attendant tell his party the flight was overbooked. They were being forced to bump passengers and the Taylors et al. would have to take a later plane. Sorry, nothing we can do. It was her snotty delivery as much as the message that put GraBois over the edge.
He yanked his federal ID out and angrily thrust it in the woman’s face.
“Who the hell are you to talk to them this way?” GraBois used his hard-ass voice. “I am a U.S. federal prosecutor from the Southern District of New York and these individuals are my witnesses in an important case.” Other passengers were looking at GraBois now, who until this moment had been the unremarkable one.
“It is imperative these people be at their destination on time in order to testify. They are holding prepaid full-fare tickets, and I don’t care who you have to bump to get them on. Get me your manager.”
Joey Taylor watched as the woman’s superior, who had been summoned, and now fluttered around GraBois, gushed apologies. He felt like a big deal when they were ushered onto the plane, and he saw the AUSA in a new light. Joe Sr. was impressed too.
“Nobody ever treated us that way before,” he said to GraBois. “No one ever showed us that kind of respect. If you weren’t here we would never have gotten on this plane.”
“I wouldn’t care if you were wearing monkey costumes,” GraBois replied. “No one deserves to be talked to that way.”
As the group drove through Warren later that day to get to their hotel, GraBois got his first real sense of the town—he’d been too focused on Ramos the last time to pay much attention. He remembered—as if he’d ever forget—the words Ramos had said to him in New York.
“You know where that place is? It’s some backwoods little hole out in the middle of nowhere.” It had been muggy and miserable back in New York, but here in Warren, the air was fresh and cool on this mid-August day, and it carried the fragrant scent of late summer roses, yarrow and daylilies from flowerbeds laid out neatly on manicured lawns. Nestled into a bend in the Allegheny River, Warren was picture-postcard small-town USA, with its two-hundred-year-old faded brick buildings, a centerpiece clock tower, and a founder who’d died defending Bunker Hill. This placid town, with an average annual murder rate of zero, was overwhelmingly white, middle-class, and churchgoing. Even though everyone GraBois had met so far was unfailingly polite and friendly, they must have wondered how their home had been chosen to play out a scene whose cast of characters defined the word “stranger.” There was the New York City Fed, the Puerto Rican child molester, and the Wild West hippies. It could get stranger, but not much.
Before dinner, GraBois took the Rainbows over to the courthouse. He always liked his witnesses to get the lay of the land in advance. He was glad the hearing tomorrow would not be in the elegant but highly formal main courtroom of the Warren courthouse, with its walls all dark inlaid wood paneling, its story-high glass windows draped in somber dark red velvet, and its imposing judicial bench towering over spectators and litigants alike. GraBois walked the Taylors through the more intimate, third-floor multipurpose space across from the District Attorney’s Office, which looked more like the small conference room it often functioned as when not in use for hearings.
The whole group ate dinner together at the hotel, and afterwards GraBois planned to spend the evening preparing his witnesses for the preliminary hearing. The next day’s court appearance would be Ramos’s first since his July 10 arrest, and GraBois went over again how the judge would listen to the prosecution’s case, then decide if it merited proceeding to trial or dismissal. The evidence itself was pretty straightforward. GraBois might introduce the photos of Ramos from June 22, 1986, which Barry Adams had supplied, and Adams himself would testify about finding Ramos on the bus, heading out of camp with Joey’s brother Billy.
But the most important voice would be Joey’s. It would also be the biggest wild card. Four years had passed since his assault, a long time to retain an accurate memory of events. Yet even if it had happened yesterday, a child’s testimony was never a sure thing. Sitting on the stand, facing their attacker, victims had to relive the intimate details of the attack out loud in a courtroom full of strangers. Although uniformed men might be standing by to protect a boy like Joey, their guns sometimes had exactly the opposite effect of making him feel safe. There was always a risk the testimony would fall apart.
GraBois and Marylou Barton sat with Joey in GraBois’s room conducting one more in a string of mock interrogations, stopping as they went along to reassure the boy.
“Will he be there tomorrow? Will he talk to me? Will I have to look at him?” Joey had a string of questions that betrayed his nerves.
“Yes, he’ll be there; no, you absolutely don’t have to say a word to him. I’ll probably ask you to identify him, but just briefly, so you’ll point to him, and then you can look away. Just look at me the whole time, or at the judge. But if you’re feeling funny, look at me. I’ll be there to protect you.”
Joey nodded and seemed more comfortable. In court the next day he would wear a suit his parents had bought him specially—a present for his thirteenth birthday one week earlier—but right
now he was a boy in shorts and sneakers, looking like he just wanted to sit in his room with his little brother Billy and fight over the hotel TV remote.
“The other attorney is going to ask what I told you to say,” GraBois went on. “This is very important, because I’m not telling you what happened, you’re telling me what happened.”
They went through all the questions that would be asked, one more time. The hardest part was always the moment Joey had to go over the actual rape. GraBois hated making his witness dredge it all up, and Joey was clearly embarrassed.
“Do I actually have to say it in front of the whole room? Like, use the words and everything?” He was fidgeting again, and his soft features were shuttered.
“You really have to,” GraBois said gently, “but don’t worry about it, no one’s going to say anything, you’re a kid, everyone knows it’s not your fault.”
“I’m not a homo,” Joey said. He was suddenly close to tears. “The other kids call me that, and they won’t hang out with me. I’ve gotten used to it from Billy, but I just wish the others would stop. Could you make them stop? Could you make it better, like it was before all this?” He looked hopefully at the man who had stood up for his family at the airport earlier in the day. GraBois thought his heart was going to break. He didn’t know what to answer, but he tried.
“I can’t tell the other kids what to think,” he said gently. “But I’d tell them what I think; that you’re a hero, Joey. You are doing one of the bravest and strongest things anyone could ever do. You are the reason we’re going to lock this man up so he can’t hurt any other kids for a long time. I would be proud if you were my son. And I’ll always be proud to hang out with you.”
His words didn’t get much of a reaction from Joey, but GraBois thought he detected a fleeting smile at the corners of the boy’s mouth. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking. Joey finished his practice testimony with no further hesitation, and GraBois knew he’d do well the next day. By now the boy had told it so many times in the practice runs, it would help him to feel like it had happened to someone else.
GraBois had deliberately booked connecting rooms, and before Joey left, the prosecutor told him if he needed anything, if he got nervous, or if he just wanted to talk, he should knock on the door. A few minutes later, GraBois heard soft tapping, and when he opened the connecting door, Joey stood there.
“Everything okay?” GraBois asked.
“Oh yeah,” said Joey, looking a little sheepish. “Um… I just wanted to say hi.”
Every Wednesday was preliminary hearing day at the Warren County Courthouse. On Wednesdays District Judge Dalton E. Hunter traveled from his storefront office in the neighboring town of Tidioute to Warren’s 150-year-old, historic landmark building. Hunter was a stocky, beer-bellied ex–police chief. Like the six other district judges in this judicial district, Hunter had no law degree; in fact, he’d never gone to college. But he took the responsibility of meting out justice seriously. It was Judge Hunter who’d arraigned Ramos one month earlier, who’d been astonished to see the determined New York Fed present himself with his prisoner, and who’d promptly set the astronomical million-dollar bail. Now Judge Hunter would listen to the prosecution’s argument that this case had enough evidence to be bound over for trial.
Until today the only press coverage had consisted of a short paragraph in the Warren Times Observer, but word had spread about the big-city prosecutor who’d come to town, and a handful of area reporters were wedging in to sit facing the judge behind the two simple counsel tables. Jose Ramos himself would just be traveling around the corner, from the cell where he’d spent the last month in the modern, low, brick county jail adjacent to the courthouse.
That morning Joe Sr. had given his son a pep talk while they’d gotten dressed. Joey donned the new blue suit his mother had hung carefully overnight to smooth out the suitcase wrinkles. His father didn’t own one, but he spent some time looping a tie around the collar of his dress shirt. They’d discussed all of this so many times before, and Joey seemed calm, but he’d clearly been thinking about what lay ahead.
“I know this guy shouldn’t be out wrecking lives,” he told his father, “so I feel like I can do it. But I don’t know how I’m going to do it. That’s the hard part.”
“It is hard to tell the truth sometimes,” Joe Sr. said. “All I can say is that in my experience, telling the truth is always better than lying.”
But a few hours later, when the boy and his parents arrived, Joey Taylor wasn’t sure. His first moment in the courthouse was a scene straight out of four years of recurring nightmares. As he and his parents reached the top of the stairs to enter the hearing room, they nearly bumped into Ramos, who was being led off the elevator and down the hall into a waiting area. Clad in an orange prison jumpsuit, his hair was shorter and grayer than the last time the boy had seen him. Unruly waves framed his face and his beard was longer and wilder, a massive clump of frizzy gray brush. Unseen, Joey fled into the hearing room, following his parents. Jose Ramos had been in leg irons and flanked by deputy sheriffs; still, his proximity gave the boy a shock.
When Ramos finally entered the room, he was himself confronted by the Rainbow contingent waiting there. Normally, witnesses were secluded across the hall in the DA’s Office until they were called to testify, but GraBois had planned it differently. He wanted Ramos to see his accusers right from the start, to hammer home his message. This is not a game, the message read; I’m here—and I’m not alone. The boy you raped is here too and he’s not afraid. He’s going to tell the judge under oath, right now, exactly what happened to him on that bus when he was only eight years old. You are dead in the water.
As a tactic, this psychological warfare seemed to have hit its mark. While Ramos had known the witnesses were scheduled to be there, he appeared transfixed by Joey, his parents, and Barry Adams, who now all sat quietly at the prosecution table. GraBois hoped actually seeing the Rainbows would provoke Ramos into a panicked, confessional state, like the one that had netted the 90 percent confession on the Patz case two years earlier. The room was so small that Ramos stood not six feet from Joey, who interpreted his look as a menacing glare and shrank back in his chair. GraBois asked the judge to order Ramos not to look at the boy. Judge Hunter in turn instructed deputies to stand between the two, screening Joey from his assailant.
As often as not, defendants waived their right to a preliminary hearing, even though that guaranteed the case would proceed to trial. But because it was the only chance to see how the witnesses might fare on the stand at trial, a defense attorney might also use the hearing to reconnoiter the prosecution’s case. If Tom Bonavita, Ramos’s public defender, got under Joey’s skin, intimidated him a little, and made him slip up, every word today would go on the record. It would create a huge problem for the prosecution if later at trial the boy flat-out contradicted his first testimony. And in the defense’s best-case scenario, if Joey crumbled on the stand today, so would the case. Besides the obvious benefits to the defense, GraBois half expected Ramos just wouldn’t be able to resist going up against him. But it didn’t happen.
“At this point,” Bonavita said to the judge when the hearing got under way, “Mr. Ramos has indicated he wishes to waive his preliminary hearing.”
“You wish to waive it?” The judge asked Ramos for confirmation, and he nodded.
“Mr. Ramos, you have to answer yes or no. Is your answer yes?”
Ramos nodded again.
This wasn’t good enough for GraBois. Exasperated, he went into what he called “busting chops” mode.
“Your Honor,” he said, “I do not believe a response other than a mumble was made on the record. I ask it be stated clearly by Mr. Ramos, not counsel, that he wished to waive.”
At that, Ramos’s attorney bristled.
“May it please the court,” Bonavita said, “this individual has not entered his appearance; he is not the attorney of record. I don’t even know who he is, and I respectfully
request any request for procedural points be made by the deputy attorney general, not by this individual who has not entered any kind of appearance whatsoever.” This was partly a nod to the record, to lay the groundwork for a future appeal, but the defense attorney was also annoyed enough by GraBois’s condescending tone to challenge it.
“What a wiseass,” GraBois muttered to Joey. He rose from his seat and addressed the judge.
“Your Honor, this individual is a special deputy attorney general from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. That individual has not told me who he is. I assume he is counsel for Mr. Ramos. I will state my name for the record, and that individual can then understand who this individual is.”
Next to him, Joey seemed to perk up at the prospect that his team was taking on the “other” side.
“My name is Stuart R. GraBois.” He spelled it, articulating each letter, taking care, as he always did, to capitalize the B. “I am a special deputy attorney general for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in charge of the prosecution of Jose Antonio Ramos. Thank you.” He wants to play games, I can play games too, GraBois thought, and persisted until Ramos confirmed his decision out loud. But the prosecutor wasn’t finished.
“Before we recess, may we have a minute to consult in the hallway?” he hastily asked the judge. “We’ll be right back.”
GraBois wasn’t blindsided by Ramos’s move, but he had gone to enormous trouble and some expense to bring his witnesses to Warren. Joey had been through those grueling rehearsals, and if they ended things now, it would all be for nothing. GraBois wasn’t going to lose the Taylors’ testimony just because Ramos was a coward. While the family had kept up their end of the bargain thus far, he was well aware a Rainbow in the hand… was an ephemeral thing. GraBois and Marylou Barton huddled in the corridor.
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