by Ken Gross
LOMBARDINO: Madame, will you please do that!
There was to be no velvet on the fist. These two people, virtual strangers who knew each other mostly by reputation, were going into combat without the pretense of chivalry. The first exchange was meant to demonstrate who was in control. Instinctively, Alice understood and resisted. She was helpless as Lombardino lunged directly into her sex life.
LOMBARDINO: When you were working at the Heritage House, did you know a Mr. John Walters?
CRIMMINS: Yes, I did.
LOMBARDINO: Was he a married man?
CRIMMINS: I knew him as separated.
LOMBARDINO: Did you go out with him?
CRIMMINS: Yes, I did.
Everyone in the courtroom understood the code. For “going out,” they read “sex.” Lombardino re-established her identity as a cocktail waitress at the Heritage House. John Walters had also worked at the Heritage House. Had she stayed overnight with Walters? Lombardino asked. Yes, she said, she had.
“You know,” she would say years later, “going back over the transcripts—I mean, reading them—I know I sounded like a bitch. But that man started on me as soon as he got up. And I got angry. I just wanted to tell my side of the story, and all he was interested in was my sex life. I wanted to say I was innocent, but he never let me. He just kept hammering at that one point—my sex life.”
Lombardino was promiscuous with names—he would ruin a marriage or a relationship or poison a reputation with the flick of his tongue. How about Carl Andrade? he asked, as Marty Baron rose wearily from the shambles of the defense table, by now the camp of a beaten army.
“I know in what direction the District Attorney is going,” said Baron. “It’s something that is going to defame this witness and lead her up to ridicule.”
Lombardino was prepared for the objection. He recited the law: “The rules of evidence are such that the People have an absolute right to inquire into every act involving moral turpitude of any defendant who takes the stand, in order to attack and impeach her credibility and/or her character.”
Farrell nodded and told Lombardino to proceed. The Assistant District Attorney, pacing thoughtfully, asked Alice if she remembered the time when Eddie surprised her in bed with Carl Andrade.
She did.
LOMBARDINO: How was Carl Andrade dressed?
CRIMMINS: He was in a state of undress.
LOMBARDINO: Will you tell the men of this jury panel what you mean by a state of undress?
Alice Crimmins looked at Lombardino for a moment, wondering how deliberately explicit he would force her to be. She felt as if he were making her undress in public. “Just what I said, sir,” she replied coldly. “A state of undress.”
The enmity had grown overwhelming, as she pointedly called him “sir” and he struck her with “madame.” Lombardino wanted all the details about Andrade’s sudden flight through the window after a quick scuffle with Eddie. Speaking calmly, Alice said she had got dressed and taken Andrade’s clothing out to where he waited in his car.
If there was triumph at the prosecution table, it was because they had done their homework. Lombardino had a file on Alice Crimmins that was like a link to every secret. As she sat exposed on the witness stand, Lombardino reminded her of a job she had held briefly at the World’s Fair in 1964. She knew what was coming. She had had an afternoon tryst with a buyer named Stanley Bauman. The names tumbled out and Alice acknowledged each one. There were some names that Tony Lombardino did not dare bring out. When he brought up another boat trip, he carefully omitted naming the important guests aboard the boat. She had shared a cabin with Tony Grace in 1964 when she sailed to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The trip was aboard Sal LoCurto’s boat, and it was on that trip that she had met Robert Wagner and Paul Screvane.
“Oh, I knew about those people,” Lombardino said later, “but why drag them into it?”
“The audience is directed to stop comments,” ordered Judge Farrell. “Again, I warn you that you must keep quiet. It’s important to the fairness of the situation.”
Lombardino waited until the judge had finished. He was at the prosecution table, his back to the court, reading from a legal pad full of hasty scrawls.
LOMBARDINO: Do you know the name of Pasquale Picassio?
CRIMMINS: I know Pat Picassio.
LOMBARDINO: What is his occupation?
CRIMMINS: He’s a barber.
LOMBARDINO: And did you ever take anyone to his barbershop?
CRIMMINS: I took my children to the barbershop.
LOMBARDINO: And did Pasquale cut your children’s hair?
CRIMMINS: Yes.
LOMBARDINO: Did you ever date Pasquale Picassio, the barber?
CRIMMINS: Yes.
LOMBARDINO: How many times?
CRIMMINS: I’d say ten times.
LOMBARDINO: Did you ever have a relationship with Pasquale Picassio in the back of his automobile?
CRIMMINS: No, I don’t believe I did.
LOMBARDINO: Would it refresh your recollection if I told you that you had a sexual relationship with him in the back of that car behind the barbershop [in the fall of 1964]?
CRIMMINS: I don’t remember it.
She had finally found a defense against Lombardino’s relentless remonstration—lapse of memory. There was no end to Lombardino’s scolding pursuit and she realized she was losing badly. Lombardino was doing what the police had done ever since the children were killed—trying to connect her sex life to their deaths. She could never comprehend what one had to do with the other.
In public Lombardino demanded that Alice be judged by her sexual conduct. Who was out looking for the killer while the police were tapping her telephone and listening to her passion? she wanted to know. Lombardino spent all of his energy proving that she slept with a lot of men while Alice believed he should have been looking for murder clues. In any event, the tone of the trial never recovered from the encounter about the barber.
Lombardino returned to the subject of Joe Rorech, trying to squeeze the last bit of scandal out of that relationship. Alice admitted she had been to Rorech’s home when his wife was away.
LOMBARDINO: Does he have a swimming pool there, Mrs. Crimmins?
CRIMMINS: Yes, he does.
LOMBARDINO: Did you ever go swimming in that pool?
CRIMMINS: Yes, I did.
LOMBARDINO: What were you wearing when you went swimming in that pool, Mrs. Crimmins?
CRIMMINS: One time a bathing suit; one time, no bathing suit.
LOMBARDINO: Where were your children when you were swimming without a bathing suit in Joe Rorech’s swimming pool?
CRIMMINS: They were dead.
At the Part I restaurant, where the defense regrouped for lunch, Morty Allerand, the owner, made certain that everyone was comfortable. Allerand was a fussy, generous man who provided everything for his guests. If he didn’t have a certain dish in his restaurant, he would send someone to fetch it from another restaurant. A natural host, Allerand provided food, liquor, and an appreciative audience. He was always laughing at his friend Jimmy Breslin, even when Breslin wasn’t saying anything particularly funny. Allerand listened more to tone than substance, and he thought Breslin sounded funny.
Whatever people said about Alice Crimmins, Morty Allerand liked her. He listened to her tone and his instinct told him she was a good person. He didn’t pay much attention to details of the trial—after all, some of his best customers were members of the District Attorney’s staff and it wouldn’t do his business any good to antagonize them. They accepted Morty’s geniality toward Alice for what it was—the manners of a natural host. Gradually, though, Allerand found that he was no longer neutral about the trial. He was rooting for Alice Crimmins. She was a generous, large-hearted woman, he believed, and as a thoughtful host, he wanted to make some gesture of appreciation. He bought a case of domestic champagne for the party he was going to t
hrow when she was acquitted. There was no doubt that she would be acquitted. He heard it personally from Harold Harrison every day at lunch. Among the people he invited were a number of reporters, who injected this premature cockiness into color stories surrounding the trial. The word got back to the people waiting in the lines every day, and it was mangled in the retelling. The version that swept the corridors was that Alice herself had ordered a case of champagne for her victory celebration.
Every night, when Lewis Rosenthal came home from the hectic day in court, he read all the newspapers and watched the television news programs about the trial. The judge had toyed with the idea of sequestering the jury, but decided against the expense and trouble of putting the jury under guard in a hotel. He believed that the jury would not be influenced by the outside world. Lewis Rosenthal, however, could never escape the trial. One day he went to his doctor for a checkup. The receptionist found out that he was a member of the jury and rose out of her seat, shaking a fist at him: “You have to find her guilty! You can’t let her go free!”
After Thursday’s luncheon recess Lombardino wanted to explore Alice’s job at Hagen Industries, where she had worked for Charles Boylan, then thirty-eight, married, with a family in Virginia and an apartment in New York.
LOMBARDINO: How long did you live with Charles Boylan, your supervisor?
CRIMMINS: Until you people gave him such a hard time that we couldn’t see each other any more.
LOMBARDINO: Did his wife give you a hard time, Mrs. Crimmins?
CRIMMINS: Through you, yes.
LOMBARDINO: Did you ever have your clothing up at this apartment, Mrs. Crimmins?
CRIMMINS: I told you, I moved in there.
LOMBARDINO: Did you ever get your clothing out of the apartment?
CRIMMINS: No.
LOMBARDINO: What happened to your clothing?
CRIMMINS: His wife threw them out.
LOMBARDINO: Did she do anything else to your clothing that you know of?
CRIMMINS: I was told she tore them up.
Lombardino raised the name of an executive at Norelco, but apparently the relationship was only friendly. “Nothing ever happened, if that’s what you want to know,” she snapped. Lombardino put on the record the fact that both Rorech and Grace had helped support Alice Crimmins. Knowing that the omission of something can often be more significant than allowing a denial to go into the record, Lombardino let the jury draw the conclusion that all Alice’s lovers were helping support her. Another technique for suggesting things to a jury is to ask a question in such a way that even a denial doesn’t erase suspicion.
LOMBARDINO: Did you ever cry when you were talking to the police about [your children]?
CRIMMINS: Yes, I did.
LOMBARDINO: When was that?
CRIMMINS: I don’t know. You broke me down so many times it’s ridiculous. I was there eight or ten hours at a clip with you people—voluntarily, too.
Judge Farrell was becoming impatient. He got up and began to wander around his chair. He paced as Lombardino hammered at Alice’s crumbling defenses. Lombardino missed the signal and kept up the attack. End it, Farrell finally said.
Alice Crimmins walked away from the witness stand stunned by her ordeal. She knew it had been a failure. Her protests had sounded feeble, almost like technical denials. She had wanted to be open, but it came out guarded. She had wanted to explain, but it all seemed to serve the prosecution’s cause. It had turned out like her relationship with the police—the first hope of cooperation had turned to defiance. And the defiance had spoiled her appearance.
“A tramp like that is capable of anything.” Lewis Rosenthal heard his fellow juror Sam Ehrlich make that remark, and he found it a fair reflection of the jury sentiment. Ironically, Sam Ehrlich would eventually come to Alice’s rescue.
47
There were a few loose ends to tie up on Friday, May 24, but for all practical purposes the trial ended with Alice’s appearance on the stand. The legal maneuvers and technicalities would flesh out and harden decisions that had already formed in the minds of the jurors.
Despite the myth that dramatic shifts of opinion occur during summation, it is usually too late by then. What a summation does, in reality, is to muster the arguments each side will take into the jury room to try to influence the other jurors.
The defense sums up first. Harrison’s wife, Muriel, was among the spectators. It was the first time she had come to court during the trial. She knew how much this case meant to her husband. He had not slept the night before. His clothes were carefully chosen—a dark, sober suit and plain shirt and tie. Harrison had been working on the summation since the first day of the trial, keeping notes on a dozen legal pads scattered around the defense table. At breakfast that morning he had been unable to eat. The enormity of the trial had now struck him. Not only Alice Crimmins’ destiny hung on how he handled himself. If he made a fool of himself today, it would be in the full glare of the public. He had brooded about it all weekend. Instead of being fresh and rested that Monday, May 27, Harrison was still grieving for his father and afraid that he was unprepared.
“Innuendoes, dirt, filth, that’s what you were subjected to in this case,” began Harrison, trying to match indignation to the words.
Harrison had to create a reasonable doubt about the testimony of the prosecution witnesses. One by one, he ran down the list, trying to make them all sound unsavory. When he reached the name of Rorech, he paused.
“He talks about pangs of conscience? He doesn’t know what that means with his seven children and his running around. . . . He’s a pawn in this case. Somebody tightened the screw on Joe Rorech and made him say what he said, because he never said it before until he said it to you.”
Sophie Earomirski? “Just too incredible,” pronounced Harrison. “Sophie is a spurious letter-writer and I was always warned against people like that . . . who won’t sign their names.” Harrison attacked specific points, such as the fact that Alice couldn’t have known the dog was pregnant on the night of the disappearance, and alluded to the medical doubts about Sophie’s stability.
There are turning points during any trial when a lawyer knows he has won. A juror will give off such powerful signals that the message is unmistakable. Harold Harrison had waited for such a moment, but it never arrived. The two rows of faces in the jury box were grim and unsympathetic. A jury may pick up a fragment of speech, lock on to it, and ignore everything else. Harrison had attacked Sophie in a manner that was unforgivable to some jurors. Sophie was a pathetic woman, they could agree, but it was better left unsaid.
“We can’t bring back this innocent child, but, as God Almighty knows, Alice didn’t do it!”
That statement irritated a few of the men on the jury. Harold was defending Alice against the accusation of killing one child, but they were all aware of two dead children and it seemed wrong to them that she didn’t grieve equally. Harrison’s statement was correct, but it jarred and seemed a mere technical statement of innocence.
The summation took a little more than an hour, but Harrison had paid too much attention to accuracy and style to be effective.
Tony Lombardino began by defending himself. “There were times, gentlemen, that by necessity this case went into the cesspool, but that wasn’t by the District Attorney of Queens’ doing. We don’t select the evidence.”
Lombardino was sorry if he had raised his voice, but excused himself because he had become so engrossed in the case. The prosecution had presented twenty-three witnesses, and Lombardino was prepared to defend them all. No one could challenge Dr. Helpern, he declared flatly.
“Joe Rorech doesn’t merit a Legion of Honor,” he said disarmingly. “Joseph Rorech is Joseph Rorech, a man who finally got caught up in his life and in his escapades, but he didn’t deny them. . . . He got up on that stand and not only did he tell you gentlemen and everybody in this courtroom, but he told the world and he told his wife and he told his fam
ily what had transpired. I’d like to know how many men, honestly and sincerely, could have taken that course of conduct.”
Tony Lombardino found heroic qualities in Sophie Earomirski. “A decent, simple, honest woman, not psychotic, not a liar, not someone who wants to gain attention. . . . I don’t think it would be a bad world if we had more Sophies around.”
If Tony Lombardino could find virtue in every prosecution witness, he found nothing redeeming in Alice Crimmins. He saved her for last, for he wanted to leave an image with the jury.
“When Alice Crimmins testified on that stand, I couldn’t help but think about. . . the one object in this world that has the most beautiful shape and symmetrical design—the egg. Just beautiful on the outside in shape and form. But when you break the egg open, if it should be rotten inside, it’s probably the worst stench you can find anyplace in this world.” If there was an analogy that stuck with the people in the courtroom, it was the one about the beautifully rotten egg.
The trial had not taken as long as had been expected. It lasted a total of thirteen courtroom days—there were forty-two witnesses and the transcript ran to 1514 pages.
Judge Farrel outlined five possible verdicts—guilty of murder, first or second degree; guilty of manslaughter, first or second degree; or innocent. And then he turned it over to the jury, after reading them the law. The case had been made out of circumstantial evidence, Farrell said. However, circumstantial evidence was enough to convict if it was convincing. “We are not trying Mrs. Crimmins’ morals,” he said finally. “We are trying a homicide.”
But that offhand disavowal didn’t seem strong enough to neutralize the long concentration on Alice Crimmins’ sex life. More than one juror resolved the confusing instruction by ignoring it. Why had all that testimony been allowed if they couldn’t consider it?
The spectators did not disperse while the jury deliberated; they did not go home and wait near the television set for the verdict. They stayed in the corridors, or outside on the ramps, or in the fast-food restaurants across the street, never straying far, dropping their guard only when the jury went to dinner. They sat along the long plate-glass window of the courthouse corridor, waiting in blank patience, or insisting on their own interpretation of the facts. The law students lounged under the best light, reading their textbooks, maintaining a kind of sanitized distance from the more passionate spectators.