by Ken Gross
He turned back to Alice and said he had a favor to ask. He held her hand tenderly. The testimony was going to wreck his marriage. Alice nodded sympathetically. “Would you speak to Gloria?” he asked Alice. If Alice would go to his home and explain things to Gloria and tell her how much Joe loved his wife, maybe it could save Joe’s marriage.
“Certainly,” said Alice, thinking that it was a small price to pay for Joe’s loyalty.
But when Joe Rorech walked out of Harrison’s office, he was a man almost totally without hope. He had lost his business. Creditors were reclaiming his possessions. He stood a good chance of losing his freedom. His marriage was about to be tested, and he was not certain it would survive. And now he had lost Alice. As he walked to his car and Alice walked with Harrison in another direction, Rorech felt betrayed, isolated . . . and afraid.
At approximately the same hour, Judge Farrell had been explaining to Lombardino that he was duty-bound to dismiss the charges unless the prosecution presented a stronger case. While grand juries may indict for “probable cause,” a defendant cannot be convicted unless the presiding judge is persuaded that the prosecution has delivered enough evidence to the jury to form a prima facie case of guilt. That is, there must be, by law, evidence of motive and opportunity and guilt.
As Lombardino went over the files, he studied the possibilities. If Alice had confessed, that would have been convincing proof of guilt. Or if the authorities had found an accomplice. There was only one track he had not exhausted and that was to crack Joe Rorech.
The next day, as Mosley took over management of the case in court, Lombardino went across the street to Luigi’s restaurant, where he had instructed Rorech to meet him for lunch.
Both men drank through the dinner hour. They were joined during the afternoon by Detectives Kelly and Walter Anderson. Lombardino sensed that Rorech had changed. His puffed ego was deflated. He seemed stripped of pretension and artifice. He drank hard without getting drunk.
The encounter changed the trajectory of the trial, and the lives of many around it. There is only Lombardino’s version of the event: “ ‘You know, Tony,’ ” he quoted Rorech as saying, “ ‘you’re a good salesman. I’m a salesman too. And one thing I learned is that you can be too good a salesman. You had me sold, but then you oversold yourself.’ ”
Lombardino was silent for a moment. He knew that he was tantalizingly close to breaking Rorech. All he had to do was find the right combination of promises and threats. Lombardino had to deliver Rorech by Thursday, less than forty-eight hours away. Rorech had sensed Lombardino’s weakness, and some of his self-importance began to return.
“Are you afraid of Tony Grace?” asked Lombardino.
“I don’t want to end up with icepicks in my eyes,” replied Rorech.
The table was littered with half-eaten meals and empty glasses. Suddenly Lombardino wanted to get Rorech out of Luigi’s. He knew the man was about to crack and he didn’t want it to happen in a restaurant. He turned to Walter Anderson and told him to get a car and reserve a suite at a nearby motel.
At a motel flanking La Guardia airport, Rorech settled into a chair and continued drinking Scotch. Lombardino had warned his men not to try to keep up with Rorech, but sociably hold onto a drink while they tried to pry information out of him. Joe Rorech never went home that night. Nor did Walter Anderson or Tony Lombardino. On Wednesday Lombardino made a token appearance in court, but quickly left to return to the motel room.
Harrison, who had been trying to reach Rorech, was becoming alarmed. Rorech’s wife said mysteriously that she didn’t know where Joe was, but that he had called to say he was all right. Harrison dismissed it from his mind. He noted and was alarmed by the disappearance of Lombardino, but he didn’t connect the “coincidence.”
Throughout Wednesday, Lombardino fed liquor to Rorech. One of his men picked up a change of wardrobe and they bought some toilet articles to prepare for the appearance in court on Thursday. Sometime on Wednesday—Lombardino cannot pinpoint the moment—Joe Rorech came over to his side. It was accomplished without promises. Somehow it came to be understood by everyone in the room that when Rorech took the stand, he would hang Alice Crimmins.
Lombardino had committed himself, too. Rorech testified against Alice Crimmins under a grant of immunity, knowing the slate would be wiped clean and there would be no criminal prosecutions. “The charges weren’t that serious against him,” Lombardino would say years later, defending the grant of immunity.
After the luncheon recess on Thursday, May 16, Joseph Rorech was called to take the witness stand. It was almost fifty yards down the center aisle of the courtroom, and the eyes of the spectators followed his every step. Rorech did not look to either side as he took his place on the stand. His hair was combed straight back and there was no expression on his face. His expensive suit was not paid for. Alice tried to smile at him, but he never looked in her direction. He took the oath and bent forward in the witness stand, his hands clasped together and his voice muted. It was not normally a quiet voice. When he had peppered Alice with five calls a day for five years, he had made a booming, cheerful sound, alive with possibilities. He would take Alice’s slipping moods and carry her back to giddiness. “Things are never that bad,” he would say.
But as he sat in the witness stand, appearing like a condemned man, he spoke as if he were looking down the barrel of a gun. He had to be reminded to keep his voice up. Harold Harrison, sensing something ominous, asked for a sidebar conference, a conference which takes place out of range of the jury. He made a motion for an offer of proof—which is a motion out of the range of the jury asking the District Attorney to indicate the general area of the forthcoming testimony and its relevance to the trial. Farrell was brusque with Harrison: “No.”
Then to Rorech: “Nice and loud now. I can hardly hear you.”
Rorech: “I’m sorry.”
Harrison kept throwing up objections, trying to prevent Rorech from what seemed to be building into a terrible blow against the defense. “What’s wrong?” whispered Alice to Harrison. He didn’t answer her. She would see soon enough.
Tony Lombardino led Rorech carefully. The story came out slowly at first. The testimony concerned a meeting between Alice and Joe in a cocktail lounge in Nassau County a month before the custody hearing, when the children were both alive. Harrison objected; he couldn’t see the relevance, but the judge denied every motion. Each objection was like a plea to Rorech—Harrison was saying, “Don’t do it, Joe.” But the story continued; there was no turning back for Rorech.
RORECH: Well, we kept discussing the fact that Eddie wanted the children. She did not want Eddie to have the children. She did not want her mother to have the children. Regardless of what happened, she wasn’t going to let them have the children. . . . The day that she was going to court [he had to be reminded again about his voice] she was not going to bring the children to court with her. And she was going to drop them off at her girlfriend’s house. And when she went to court that day, if she had to produce the children, she would go back to her friend’s house, pick up the children, and take off.
Harrison began to have hope. Perhaps this was the extent of Rorech’s damaging evidence. But it was hard to believe that Lombardino would lay such suspenseful groundwork unless he had something explosive.
“Did she say anything else, Mr. Rorech?” asked Lombardino.
Rorech: “She did not want Eddie to have the children. She would rather see the children dead than Eddie have them.”
The impact was lost since hardly anyone could hear it. “Wait a minute,” said Farell. “You see,” he said, pointing to the stenographic reporter, “they couldn’t even get that. Repeat it, Mr. Reporter.”
It was a surprise, but Harrison could live with that kind of testimony. There wasn’t much that was terribly incriminating; just more of the same attack on morality. Alice’s first impulse was generous. They must have put Joe through a lot to squeeze this ou
t of him, she thought. But Rorech wasn’t through. There had been a night in 1966 when Joe and Alice were talking, Rorech testified. She had been filled with remorse. If only Joe had come over on the night the children disappeared, this wouldn’t have happened, she had told Rorech. The implication of this testimony was that Alice knew what had happened that night and that Joe’s presence could have prevented it. It was vague, but Lombardino threw it in.
Harrison was worried about something besides Joe’s testimony. He was afraid of being involved in a terrible conflict, since Joe Rorech was also his client. As he listened in fascination with everyone else, Harrison decided he would have to drop Rorech as a client and possibly remove himself from the case. He had not done anything unethical, but he feared he might have compromised his client’s defense.
Rorech’s testimony continued: On another occasion Alice had told him emphatically that the children went out the front door, not the window. On the night the children disappeared, he told the jury, he called Alice twice, and the second call she never answered although he let it ring five times. He still remembered the number: Boulevard 3-7851.
And then Lombardino brought Rorech to the night of September 9, 1966. He had jumped all over the calendar with Rorech, putting him at ease in the witness chair, establishing his identity as a prosecution witness. But the point of it all was September 9, 1966. Rorech asked for a glass of water. What happened on September 9, 1966? asked Lombardino.
With his head low, Rorech said that he and Alice had gone to a motel—the Kings Grant Inn in Nassau County. Alice had started crying.
“This went on for a period of time, and she said there was no reason for them to be killed. It was senseless. The reason had been eliminated. I said to her, ‘You mean Evelyn?’ ”
One of the jurors had difficulty hearing, and Rorech spoke a little louder: “And she kept crying. She started to say again that they will understand, they know it was for the best. And I said to her, ‘Missy and Eddie are dead. No one can speak for them. Only you and I can help them.’ And she repeated over and over again, “They will understand, they know it was for the best.’ And this repeated on and on quite a few times. And then she said to me, ‘Joseph, please forgive me, I killed her.’ ”
The courtroom exploded. Alice leaped out of her chair, her fists banging on the defense table, her eyes on fire with anger. People all around the room were screaming or shouting. But it was as if the two were alone in the room—just Alice and Joe; two former lovers.
“Joseph!” she cried, her voice breaking. “How could you do this? This is not true! Joseph . . . you, of all people! Oh, my God!”
There was one person who could have challenged Rorech’s testimony. On the night when Rorech swore that Alice made her confession, Detective Phil Brady had spoken to Rorech for two hours. After he had come back from the Kings Grant Inn, Rorech had called Brady. The detective had asked Rorech over and over if Alice had said anything incriminating, but Rorech had said all the conversation was innocent. Brady remembered the conversation clearly, and he remembered that Rorech had been emphatic in denying that anything important had been said.
But Phil Brady had been pulled off the case and he didn’t follow it in the newspapers. By the time his conscience bothered him, it was too late. No one wanted to listen.
On May 16, 1968, no one knew about Detective Phil Brady. There was only the undisputed testimony of Joseph Rorech. Lombardino smiled as decorum broke down. He had enough now to take the case to the jury.
45
Peter Farrell hadn’t yet put on his robes and Harold Harrison sat nervously on the edge of his chair in the judge’s chambers before the start of court on Friday, May 17.
“I think I should withdraw,” said Harrison.
He had outlined his reasons to Farrell: he represented both Alice Crimmins and Joe Rorech, and now that one had turned against the other, he couldn’t represent the interests of both. He had dropped Rorech as a client after his appearance on the stand, but he was worried that he might have compromised Alice’s defense.
Farrell shook his head. If Harrison pulled out of the case, it would mean long delays. A new attorney would have to be hired and brought up to date. They would have to go through all the pretrial motions and the trial again. It might be assigned to another judge. Furthermore, Harrison believed that Farrell was sprinting through the case so that he would be able to attend his son’s college graduation—as he did the day after the trial ended on May 30.
Alice waited for Harrison in his office. She had thought she was immune to further shock and pain, but when Rorech turned against her, it hurt. She sat on the couch—the same couch where he had begged her to marry him a few days earlier—mumbling over and over: “Joseph, you were my best friend!” When Harrison returned from Farrell’s chambers, he sat with her, holding her hand, while she spoke to Rorech’s ghost: “Joseph, how could you? You were my friend!”
“It’s going to be a busy weekend for me,” said Harrison. “I want you to get as much rest as possible.”
She looked at him without expression. “It’s been a bad week,” she said.
On Monday the prosecution was scheduled to call its mystery witness. On Thursday, Harold Harrison had found out her name. When Lombardino handed Harrison a copy of the grand-jury minutes of Joe Rorech’s appearance, he had carelessly left an unfamiliar name on the cover. Harrison immediately guessed that “Sophie Earomirski” was the “woman in the window” and sent investigators to interview her. Mrs. Earomirski wouldn’t unchain the door when Harrison’s men rang her bell. She slammed the door in their faces and called Tony Lombardino to tell him they’d been there.
On Friday afternoon Mosley complained to Judge Farrell that Harrison’s people were “hounding” his witness. Mosley summoned Mrs. Earomirski to court and swore her in—out of turn—thus invoking immunity from defense questioning. Then Farrell summoned Harrison to his chambers again.
“Have you been bothering the People’s witness?” Farrell asked Harrison.
“I tried to talk to her, yes, Your Honor,” replied Harrison. “It’s my job.”
“This witness has now been sworn, and if you bother her again, I’ll ram it up your ass.”
Learning the identity of the mystery witness had become almost a contest among newspaper reporters. Friends and sources within the District Attorney’s office were tapped, but the security held. One day Newsday’s Manny Topol approached a stout woman sitting in the rear of the courtroom to ask if she were the mystery witness.
“No,” she said pointing at the blushing prosecutor, “I’m Tony’s mother. I’m taking him home for lunch.”
“Aw, ma,” whined Lombardino.
Harrison’s office became a combat headquarters over the weekend as he dispatched investigators to research Sophie Earomirski. It was a frustrating job, since most offices were closed, and it would continue even while Mrs. Earomirski was on the stand.
If Joe Rorech had slunk into the courtroom, Sophie Earomirski entered like a champion on Monday morning. She smiled inadvertently at her own celebrity. Urged on by the gentle questioning of James Mosley, Sophie told her tale.
It was hot, she remembered, on the night of July 13. “Very, very hot,” she said. She had gone to bed at 11:00 p.m. Trying to be vivid in her testimony, she helpfully offered the opinion that the bricks in her building retained the heat during July. Her husband had been asleep, but she was unable to sleep, so she crept out of bed and wandered into the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of iced tea, and when she glanced at the clock, it was 2:00 a.m. These little details seemed to lend a note of authenticity to Sophie’s testimony. The clock on the shelf where she stored her plastic glasses was a touch her listeners could almost visualize.
Restless, she drifted into the living room and started to work on a crossword puzzle. A breeze came in through the living-room window and it distracted her. She shut off the light and leaned out the window, letting the draft wash away the
heat. She stubbed out her cigarette on the sill and watched the sparks disappear like fireflies. And then something off to the left caught her attention. She noticed a group of people approaching, what seemed to be a family. The man was walking ahead and the woman was trailing, carrying a bundle in one hand and walking with a child in the other. The bundle was under the woman’s left arm. The child let go of the woman’s hand and walked faster toward the man. There was also a dog sniffing around on the mall, looking, it appeared, for a place to relieve itself. The woman waited for the dog, and the man became impatient.
EAROMIRSKI: He [the man] was looking left and right, up and down the street, and he called over to her to hurry up, will you, and she said that she was waiting for the dog. She said, “The dog is pregnant.” And he said to her, “Did you have to bring it?” She made a remark which I didn’t get. He went over to her and he took the bundle and he swung the bundle under his arm . . . and he walked very quickly to the car that was parked going the wrong way opposite my window. He opened the back door of the car and he took this bundle and he threw it in the back seat of the car.
MOSLEY: Go on.
EAROMIRSKI: She ran over to him and she said, “My God, don’t do that to her.” And then he looked at her and said, “Now you’re sorry?” and something else and then she looked up at him and she said, “Please don’t say that, don’t say that.” The little boy . . . got into the back seat of the car. He had climbed over and I saw him in the front seat. He looked like he was trying to get the window open there. At that point I became very upset. I became very numb. . . .
Judge Farrell interrupted to remind her that her feelings were not relevant; they were in court to hear sworn statements of fact, not personal emotions.
MOSLEY: What, if anything, did you do?