The Bomb Maker's Son
Page 18
“Members of the jury, the evidence will show you why Ian Holzner, a young man of extraordinary gifts and good fortune, would in the era of the nineteen sixties give up everything to fight injustice. And injustice is exactly what he was fighting. The Vietnam War might be a historical footnote to our generation, but when Ian Holzner was a young man it was systematic government-sanctioned slaughter of this country’s youth. Over fifty thousand young Americans died for nothing, and that’s what he wanted to stop. Ian’s own brother, Jerry Holzner, served in Vietnam and was never the same when he came back. The president of the United States sent American troops into Laos and Cambodia in clear violation of the law. It was the act of a dictator, not the leader of a democracy. National Guardsmen fired without provocation on Ohio college students and killed four. The police met nonviolent protest not with the rule of law, but with violence. The FBI created something called COINTELPRO—a so-called counterintelligence program—a covert, illegal operation that trampled on the rights of American citizens, including . . .”
Marilee Reddick half stands to object, probably because she thinks I’m about to tell the jury that COINTELPRO tortured Jerry Holzner. Not yet.
“Including the defendant, Ian Holzner. When a government acts illegally and violently, it loses its legitimacy, and some citizens will turn to violent resistance. Just like the American revolutionaries did in response to British oppression at the dawn of this country’s creation.” I look at no one but the jury, but I can sense Lovely Diamond’s shock, Marilee Reddick’s outrage, Judge Gibson’s disdain, the media’s bewilderment at my comparing the Playa Delta Bomber to an American patriot.
“And so, Ian Holzner protested against the government’s illegitimate activities by building bombs. No one denies that. He used them, not to kill or maim, but to commit acts of vandalism—blowing up statues and toilets in federal buildings and powerful corporations. These were acts reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party, when early-American radicals dumped British tea into Boston Harbor to protest oppressive taxation. Did you know that the patriot and later US President John Adams called that particular act majestic and sublime? Vandalism in the cause of liberty forms the foundation of this country.”
“One thing Ian Holzner did not do, ladies and gentlemen—he did not build the bomb that exploded at the Playa Delta Veterans Administration, and he did not plant that bomb. And let’s be clear—I’m not just talking about reasonable doubt. Although it’s not our burden, we intend to prove Ian Holzner’s innocence.”
I sit down, having flouted all the rules of opening statements. The government has the burden of proving Holzner’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but I’ve just shifted that burden, promising to establish his innocence. I’ve set myself up for failure. Neither did I attack the prosecution’s evidence as I’d intended. Nothing about Gladdie Giddens’s fading memory, the lack of DNA evidence, the government’s failure to list the surviving members of the Holzner-O’Brien collective as witnesses. Worse, I’ve placed my own credibility at risk by lauding Holzner’s radical activity, a position I know to be untenable. I don’t care. I had to get the jury’s attention. If they’re listening, there’s still a chance; it’s when a jury ignores you that you’ve lost. Just before I finished speaking, the designer from the furniture store and Joey the animator looked me in the eye. They were listening.
After court, Lovely and I go back to the office to debrief Moses Dworsky. When Eleanor overhears me describe my opening statement, she says, “I don’t care if you’re making it up to save your client, it’s disgusting.” Lovely lets slip that Lou Frantz texted her and says that he believes Holzner’s best defense is now ineffective assistance of counsel. But Dworsky nods somberly and says, “Very astute of you, Parker. There was no other choice than to shake up the trial, and the best way to do that is become a contrarian. I made a career out of being a contrarian. Strangely, it invests the lawyer with a peculiar type of credibility. If nothing else, the jury has become aware that you have testicles.”
I get back home that night to find that the sliding door to my balcony is open. Holzner is standing outside, looking toward the ocean, his elbows leaning on the redwood barrier. Emily is standing next to him, hugging herself for warmth. The air is heavy with salt, and it’s so foggy that the dew prickles my cheeks.
When I join them, he says, “So you made me out in court to be a modern-day Samuel Adams, when the truth is I was promulgating the principles of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao. The jury will never believe you.”
“Moses Dworsky thinks it’s a wise strategy.”
“What do you think, Parker?” Holzner asks.
“I think that I’ll only be able to formulate a wise strategy when you finally come clean about what you really know about the Playa Delta bombing.”
As one, they turn their backs on me and resume their father-daughter study of the Pacific coast at night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Unlike me, Marilee Reddick must’ve gotten to bed early. Her dark eyes gleam with energy, and the ambient light gives her unique silvery hair a radiant sheen. Yesterday was a good day for her.
It was not a good day for me. I spent so much time preparing for this upcoming court session that I didn’t get into bed until three in the morning, didn’t fall asleep until an hour after that. My eyes are bleary, and I keep clenching my jaw from the morning’s caffeine overdose. I didn’t take my antianxiety meds for fear that I’d pass out on my feet. I’ll be okay, because I’m asking questions, which are the verbal darts and arrows a lawyer uses to attack the witness. It’s not scary when you hold the weapons.
Judge Gibson takes the bench and instructs Reddick to call her first witness.
“The United States calls Dr. Earl Yellin.” Another advantage that Reddick has—she can legitimately call herself The United States.
A short, slender man with short, white hair gets up from a seat in the second row of the gallery and makes his way to the witness stand. His relaxed gait signals that he’s been in a courtroom before—many times. He looks to be in his early to midseventies. He’s wearing a dark-brown suit, yellow-and-tan silk tie, and gold-plated wire-rim glasses with bifocal lenses.
“What do you do for a living?” Reddick asks.
“Until my retirement five years ago in two thousand and nine, I was a forensic examiner in TEDAC. That’s the Terrorist Explosives Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Reddick asks Yellin to summarize his background. He testifies that he graduated from the University of Michigan in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and received his doctorate in mechanical engineering from USC in 1964. After a year in academia, he joined the FBI’s Los Angeles office as a forensic examiner specializing in firearms, but later transferred to the Explosives Unit, where he examined evidence associated with bombings. He conducted examinations of improvised explosive devices and their respective remains. He’s testified in court approximately five hundred times. In the course of his career, he was promoted to Senior Analyst and was involved in starting TEDAC, which focuses on terrorist attacks.
“You’re aware of the bombing of the Playa Delta Veterans Administration that occurred on December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five, are you not?” Reddick asks.
“I was the physical scientist in charge of forensic analysis of the bomb scene.”
“And what did you conclude?”
“It’s all in my report, which I finished in February of nineteen seventy-six. The bomb maker who assembled the bomb that exploded at Playa Delta constructed it out of a twelve-inch section of common steel water pipe, which was packed with dynamite.”
“Was there anything distinctive about that?”
“Not in and of itself. But evidence at the scene traced the dynamite back to a road-construction company in Temecula, California, inland from San Diego. The company had been burglarized and several boxes of dynamite stolen.”
“What, if anything, is the significance of the dynamite’s source?”
“What else did you learn?”
“The bomb was detonated with a blasting cap fashioned out of a spent gun cartridge, mercury fulminate, potassium-chlorate powder, gunpowder, and sulfur.” He launches into a narrative using technical terms that probably no one can understand. But arcane scientific jargon impresses a jury.
“Was there anything significant about the detonator?”
“Yes and no. The detonator was characteristic of the Holzner-O’Brien Gang’s bombs, but also of other groups’ bombs. In fact, that kind of detonator is used to this day.” Yellin is an effective witness, building credibility by conceding an insignificant point.
“Was there anything else distinctive about the Playa Delta bomb, in your opinion?”
“Whoever constructed the bomb custom-built a time-delay, special-purpose electrical circuit, which included safety devices and indicators. This would ensure the safety of the bomb maker and shows a high level of expertise in engineering. It was again characteristic of devices used in bombings for which the Holzner-O’Brien Gang took credit.”
“So the bomb maker was protecting himself while he was intending to kill others?” Reddick asks.
“Objection,” I say. “Argumentative.”
“Overruled,” the judge says. “The man’s an expert.”
“Dr. Yellin, in your professional opinion, did you conclude that the bomb that exploded at the Playa Delta Veterans Administration was intended to take human lives?” Reddick asks.
“Absolutely.”
“On what did you base that opinion?”
“The device was wrapped in tape embedded with nails and ball bearings. A bomb maker doesn’t use nails and ball bearings to damage property. You don’t need them to destroy property because the concussive force of the blast will do the trick. The sole purpose of packing a bomb with nails and ball bearings is to kill and injure people. The IED at the Playa Delta VA was what we call an antipersonnel device—an instrument of mass murder.”
Reddick pretends to thumb through her examination notes, but she’s really letting the jurors digest the information. “Last question, Dr. Yellin. You undertook your investigation in nineteen seventy-six. Are you simply basing your testimony on reading what you wrote in your report so many years ago?”
“I have a vivid memory of those events. I didn’t even have to look at the report. The attack on Playa Delta was one of the most destructive terrorist acts of the nineteen sixties and seventies. It was callous, because it targeted civilians and perhaps former military personnel who were in need. The deaths were tragic, and the injuries from the nails and ball bearings and shrapnel were horrific. The construction of the IED was highly sophisticated. When I arrived at the crime scene, the injured and two of the dead were still there. It was the first time in my career that I’d seen the actual victims. You never forget anything like that. Never. Of course, since then the world has gone to hell in a hand basket.” He shrugs in resignation, underscoring the evil that humans can do. The evil that he implies Ian Holzner did.
“Do you have an opinion as to which individual constructed the bomb that exploded on December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five, at the Playa Delta Veterans Administration?” Reddick asks.
“Yes. Ian Holzner.”
“Why?”
“The only group that made that type of bomb was the Holzner-O’Brien Gang, and the only person in that group capable of constructing such a sophisticated bomb was Ian Holzner. He was the only one with the engineering background required to do it.”
“Your witness, counselor,” Reddick says to me.
Before standing up, I tilt my head toward Lovely, hoping she knows something I don’t.
She covers her face with a legal pad so the jury can’t read her lips and whispers, “That guy killed us.”
When you don’t have facts in your favor, a cross-examination has to become performance art, meaningful in form no matter how lacking in substance.
“There were a lot of groups who used explosives in the early nineteen seventies, were there not, Dr. Yellin?” I ask.
“Yes, there were.”
“The Weathermen, Black December, the Jewish Defense League all used bombs in terrorist attacks.”
“They did, but they never—”
“You’ve answered the question, Dr. Yellin. Just eleven days after the Playa Delta bombing, there was an explosion at La Guardia airport in New York that killed eleven people and seriously injured seventy-four others?”
“That’s correct.”
“To this day, that crime remains unsolved?”
“Yes, but we think it was a Croatian terrorist group that was behind it.”
“There was also speculation at the time that some other terrorist group bombed La Guardia?”
“Correct.”
“Not the Holzner-O’Brien Gang, though.”
“They were a West Coast group.”
“No one took credit for the Playa Delta bombing, did they?”
“True, but three key members of the Holzner-O’Brien Gang served prison terms for their role in the bombing.”
There are actually guffaws from some spectators, which cease when Judge Gibson slaps his hand on the desk.
“My question to you, sir, was whether anyone took credit for the Playa Delta bombing,” I say.
“No.”
“And that was not typical of the Holzner-O’Brien group, was it?”
“No. They liked to brag about their crimes.”
“But not taking credit was what happened at the La Guardia bombing a week-and-a-half later?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“Eleven days was more than enough time for someone to drive across country from LA to New York, if they kept driving?”
“I suppose so. Traffic isn’t in my area of expertise.”
A few more titters.
“And you’re aware, Dr. Yellin, that sometimes radicals of the nineteen sixties and seventies moved in and out of collectives, changed allegiances, would work together on discrete operations?” Though I’m pointing a finger at him, Yellin doesn’t react. There’s no change in expression, no shift in body position. I’ve rarely seen anyone so comfortable on the witness stand.
“That truly isn’t within my area of expertise,” he says.
“So you don’t know one way or another if the people who bombed La Guardia were also involved in the Playa Delta bombing?”
“There’s no evidence of that, and all the evidence points to Holzner-O’Brien.”
“But you don’t know for certain?”
“The only evidence that we developed was that the bomb bore the earmarks of Ian Holzner’s bombs.”
As I make absolutely no progress substantively—actually, as I lose ground—I speak in an accusatory tone, shake my head in disbelief, turn my back on the witness, pretend to check my notes, and now raise my voice.
“Wasn’t that your job, Dr. Yellin?”
“What was, sir?”
“To follow all leads even if they contradict the one that you want to push?”
He crosses his legs and bends forward, the first tiny fissure in his solid demeanor. “Yes, sir. Which we did.”
“Isn’t it the job of law enforcement to exclude suspects in pursuit of the truth?”
Reddick stands and objects that I’ve interrupted Yellin’s answer.
“Overruled,” Judge Gibson says. “The witness is a professional. And you’ll have a chance to question him on redirect, Ms. Reddick.”
“And you didn’t exclude the possibility that the people who bombed La Guardia Airport in New York also had involvement in the Playa Delta bombing, did you?” I say.
“I don’t know how I could’ve done that.”
“And you don’t know whet
her the perpetrator of the La Guardia bombing had the ability to make a bomb like the one that exploded at the Playa Delta VA, do you?”
“I do not know that.”
Word games. Cosmetics. I’m getting him to agree with me about facts that don’t really mean anything, hoping the jury believes the questions to be meaningful.
“DNA evidence can be preserved after an explosion of the type that occurred at Playa Delta, can’t it, Dr. Yellin?”
“That’s correct. There’s no such thing as vaporization, even with a powerful explosion like that.”
“And sometimes hair and blood and clothing can survive an explosion of the type that occurred at Playa Delta?”
“Yes. It’s common with a pipe bomb that such material can get caught in the threads of the pipe.”
“And you didn’t find such material at the Playa Delta crime scene?”
“We did not.”
“So there was no DNA or hair or blood left at the scene that would put Ian Holzner at the scene?”
“Correct.”
“Fingerprints can also be preserved despite an explosion?”
“That’s also true. As I said, no such thing as vaporization here.”
“And you didn’t find Ian Holzner’s fingerprints at the scene?”
“Not Ian Holzner’s.”
I feel Lovely tense behind me, but I’m with her. We’re hoping that Yellin is being evasive, that his answer is what we lawyers call a negative pregnant—a partial denial that actually admits a fact. Or maybe he’s just being precise. Either way, it’s time to go fishing.
“You said you didn’t find Ian Holzner’s fingerprints at the scene,” I ask. “What about someone else’s fingerprints?”
He inhales and closes his eyes briefly, aware of his error. I wonder if he would’ve made the mistake if he were five years younger, if he were still working for the Bureau.
“We did find a set of partial fingerprints.”
“On remnants from the bomb parts?”
“No on . . . there was a silver earring left at the scene. It was pretty much intact. We were able to get a print.” He’s trying to maintain his composure, but he knows that he slipped up. I’m trying to keep my composure, too. The US Attorney never disclosed this evidence to us, even though she was constitutionally obligated to do so.