by Ken Gross
Lyon and Erlbaum had learned to take Alice’s counsel. She had become adept at reading character and more than once warned against a particular prospective juror. They trusted her intuition.
Eddie Crimmins, looking forlorn, seldom missed a court session. He would sit alone on a window ledge staring out at the monotonous rows of cars in the parking lot, his brow pinched into a scowl. Occasionally, one of the familiar detectives would pass by and nod, but Eddie remained an enigma. “It never seems to end,” he said almost to himself one day as a reporter stood next to him at the window. “I thought I’d be over it by now, but I’m not. It just goes on and on.”
Eddie would listen to the conversations of the spectators in brooding detachment. They always thought Alice was guilty. “I know Alice didn’t do it,” he told the reporter. “The police kept trying to make me say she did it; they kept trying to show me she did it. But I know her better than anyone. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t. I guess it’s never going to end. I mean, I know it’s over between me and Alice, but this”—and his head swiveled to take in the whole courthouse—“this is never going to end until they find her innocent. Then it’ll be over. Maybe then the pain of the kids being killed like that’ll go away. Maybe I’ll be able to stop thinking about it. When this is all over.”
A few yards away a line of spectators waited for a participant to leave the courtroom. A young construction worker remembered the headlines of the case and wanted to know more details. A housewife who had attended every session of the first trial felt obliged to see it through, as though a lingering ache couldn’t be ignored.
“She’s presumed to be innocent, but she is not innocent,” Demakos told the jury.
“I am too innocent,” cried Alice. “You know I’m innocent!”
Flustered by the outburst, Demakos had trouble relocating himself in the opening questioning of members of the jury. He was a legal technician, but an interruption of courtroom decorum jarred him. Jury selection consumed four days, and the trial began on March 15.
The formal prosecution opening was delivered by Nicolosi, whose voice became high and irritating when he was excited. “We are going to prove to you that the body [Eddie] was so decomposed that the Medical Examiner could not arrive at a cause of death,” said Nicolosi. “And you will hear that maggots—”
Lyon rose with objections, claiming that the prosecutor, lacking real proof, was appealing to emotion and trying to provoke an outburst from Mrs. Crimmins.
Judge Balbach told Nicolosi to continue.
“They found the body in the blanket covered with maggots—”
Again Lyon appealed to Balbach to stop Nicolosi, but the judge rapped down each objection.
“You are going to hear that decomposition resulted not only from maggots, but from weather; five days exposed to the elements. And we are going to prove to you gentlemen that in the latter part of 1966 Alice Crimmins confessed. She stated, ‘I killed my daughter and I agreed to the murder of my son.’”
Lyon wondered what Nicolosi could mean. If he was referring to Rorech’s testimony, Rorech had sworn that Alice had mentioned only the girl. In 1966, according to Rorech, Alice had delivered a partial confession about the murder of her daughter. What Lyon didn’t know was that Kelly had provided a way out of the dilemma. Now Rorech would allege that Alice had said: “I killed Missy . . . and I agreed to the murder of my son.” It allowed the District Attorney to take the alleged confession piecemeal, using one segment when it suited the first trial and two parts for the second trial. It was a very tricky business, for if in 1966 Alice had simply told Rorech straightforwardly that she had killed her “children,” the statement would have been inadmissible in the first trial. But in the more complicated construction of the second trial the District Attorney could bring back an embellished Rorech.
The charges against Alice Crimmins in the second trial were strung together like afterthoughts. The indictment and the proof were cut to fit each other by legal tailors. In the first trial Alice had been tried for the murder of her daughter, but had been convicted of manslaughter. Thus, she could not now be charged with first-degree murder in Missy’s death. The manslaughter conviction was, in effect, an acquittal of the more serious charge of murder, and the rules of double jeopardy forbade retrial on the murder charge.
Alice had never been accused of anything concerning Eddie’s death, so the District Attorney decided to use the harshest possible charge.
Curiously, the evidence in Eddie’s death—the more serious charge—was even weaker and more circumstantial than in Missy’s case. Indeed, there was only one way to prove that Eddie had been murdered: first prove that Missy had been murdered, then somehow link the two deaths. The chain was very flimsy and had to be strung together backward. Unless the jury accepted the premise of Missy’s murder and that it was related to Eddie’s, there was no way to conclude any criminal liability in Eddie’s death.
Technically, Rorech’s testimony could be construed as an admission from Alice, although, at best, a dubious one. However, the jury could not even consider the prosecution’s thesis unless it was provided with some basis in testimony. But Dr. Milton Helpern testified that Eddie’s murder could scientifically be “inferred” because of the circumstances of Missy’s death. He further swore that the deaths were related, since both children were found in vacant lots and both had disappeared at the same time.
Lyon was astounded. Dr. Helpern could, perhaps, give competent medical testimony concerning the results of an autopsy, the results of laboratory tests. But what he was testifying to in the second Crimmins trial was pure police hypothesis. There was, however, no way for Lyon to make a frontal assault on Helpern’s testimony, and so he got him off the stand as soon as possible.
Working for the prosecutor was the natural confusion of the jurors. Once they became convinced that the evidence supported guilt on one charge, it was natural that the proof should blur, covering the entire case.
There is a precious aspect to the District Attorney’s argument. Alice was accused of having killed Missy, yet the charge was manslaughter; she was accused of merely “consenting” to the murder of Eddie, but was charged with murder. It was a hard reversal for the jury to follow.
Many of the witnesses of the first trial reappeared in the second. Alice lost control more frequently. She would bite back tears when the children were mentioned. When Eddie Crimmins was on the stand and the prosecution attorney was questioning him on the routine facts of his life—where he lived, where he worked—he was asked if he had children. Eddie faltered, his voice breaking when he answered. When the prosecutor persisted and asked their birthdays, he lost his voice for a moment. He sat on the witness stand, clenching his fists, fighting for control. Alice couldn’t bear to watch and sobbed into her hands. Even the stoic court officers were affected at such moments.
The trial was also marked by the eloquence of Herbert Lyon. “We expect that when [this trial] is over,” he told the jury, “you will feel that this is a woman who suffered the greatest tragedy in the world in that she lost her two children and now she is falsely accused of having killed them. . . . And we expect that . . . plain simple, human, decent justice requires that after six years of this torture, that this woman be vindicated and sent home free.”
The prosecution tactic once more was to depict Alice’s morals as an issue. It was done by suggestion, by a kind of raised-eyebrow innuendo. Michael Clifford, then a patrolman, now a detective, was asked by Vincent Nicolosi how Mrs. Crimmins had looked when he first appeared on the scene. Clifford swore she was wearing makeup and had her hair “all teased up” when he answered the first alarm—leaving the jury with the impression that she was more concerned with her beauty than with her children.
Lyon cross-examined, trying to undo the subliminal damage.
LYON: You noticed her that day pretty well, didn’t you?
CLIFFORD: Yes, I did.
LYON: You noticed the color of her
blouse?
CLIFFORD: Yes.
LYON: The color of the pants she was wearing?
CLIFFORD: Yes.
LYON: Did you know what color your wife’s blouse was that morning?
Demakos objected and Balbach sustained him, but later, in the third-floor corridor, Clifford told Demakos that he had made a mistake, he should have let him answer. Why? asked Demakos. “Because I’m not married,” replied Clifford.
Jerry Piering’s memory in 1971 was just as crisp as it had been in 1968. He could still see the manicotti in the garbage. He remembered that Alice had told him the children had been unruly and that at one point, in the car, “she swung and hit the girl.”
Anthony Grace, a little older, with a little more dignity to lose, spent longer on the witness stand than he did during the first trial. The prosecution case, which had to be presented to the jury with oblique precision, was to suggest that Alice and Tony were partners in the murders. Demakos attacked the contractor as if Grace were on trial. He wanted to know about their relationship, emphasizing their contacts since the murders. In 1969 and 1970 Grace had taken Alice on cruises, and underlying the questioning was the resentful accusation of lives continuing.
“Does the defendant reside with you?” Demakos asked.
Grace replied that she sometimes “stays” with him. “Comes and goes just like that,” said Grace inelegantly.
The second trial lasted six weeks, and gradually the prosecution became worried about the strength of their case. Again and again Lyon was approached by Demakos offering Alice “a deal”; she spurned them, but Demakos regarded her hesitation as evidence of guilt.
Detective John Kelly was on the verge of retirement when he testified that he had offered Alice a deal. She had said she had to discuss it with her attorney when Kelly told her she could get “full immunity” from prosecution. In his summation Demakos would point to that offer and argue that Alice’s reaction was not that of an innocent person. An innocent person would have dismissed the offer immediately.
The prosecution hinged a large part of its case on such negative points. Kelly said he had listened to hundreds of hours of tapes from Alice’s telephone taps and she had never discussed the children. Lyon would make it clear that Alice knew about the telephone taps and would never pick up the receiver without the greeting: “Hello, boys, drop dead,” before beginning her normal conversations.
Joe Rorech’s suit was paid for this time, but it was a cheaper cut than the one he had worn at the first trial. Now a laborer, Rorech seemed drained of fight. He recited mechanically, swearing that Alice had told him she had killed Missy “and consented” to the murder of her son. Alice’s outcry was tinged with sympathy. She could see that he was a broken man. Lyon dredged up Rorech’s drinking, his sloppy business habits, and made the jury aware that he had escaped criminal prosecution through his testimony.
By the time he was finished with his cross-examination, Lyon thought he had demolished Rorech’s testimony. But he understood that the jury could still take the word of a thoroughly discredited witness when it wanted.
If the years had punished Rorech, Sophie Earomirski seemed to have flowered since her last public appearance. She was slimmer and her hair had been coiffed. Her story, with all its inconsistencies, conflicts, and self-serving explanations, was still popular.
Alice screamed from the defense table: “You liar . . . Do you even know what the truth is?” But Lyon understood that in some fashion Sophie had managed to cast herself in the role of underdog. He gently brought out her medical history, allowing her to make her denials, attempting to damage her testimony without destroying Sophie.
On April 7 the prosecution rested, mildly depressed. Demakos glumly told friends at lunch that he thought he had blown the case. Rorech had not been particularly effective and Sophie’s story was hard to swallow. Nicolosi, however, was unfailingly optimistic. Wait until Alice gets on the stand, he told Demakos.
But Lyon had decided against putting Alice on the stand. At the first trial she had been a bad witness—she had lost her temper and been unconvincing. Lyon decided to risk his case by continuing the tactic of understatement. He played tapes of long conversations—between Rorech and Alice Crimmins, recorded before the first trial. Boring, meandering, they were punctuated by ardent declarations of Joe’s affection. Lyon wanted the jury to try to reconcile the man on the tapes with the witness who swore that Alice was a killer. A proper reading would show him as a spurned lover.
On April 12, in the midst of the defense testimony, Demakos asked Judge Balbach to allow him to reopen the prosecution case—he had a new witness. Mrs. Tina DeVita was a small, nervous woman who had lived in the Kew Gardens Hills development at the time of the disappearance. On the night of July 13/14, 1965, she was coming home from visiting relatives. Her husband was driving, and as she sat on the passenger side of the car she looked out the driver’s window, past her husband, and saw something on the mall where Alice Crimmins lived. What she saw, she said, was “people . . . walking . . . a man carrying a bundle, a woman, a dog and a boy.” She had kept the story to herself for almost six years, she said, because she was afraid. Lately, with the story in the newspapers, she had told her husband, and he had urged her to come forward.
Herbert Lyon seemed to lose his temper for the first time. Why should anyone believe you after all these years? he asked angrily. He could see that the effect on the jury was powerful. This testimony tended to corroborate the prosecution’s shakiest and most important witness—Sophie Earomirski. It added another coating of paint on Demakos’ cracked portrait. Mrs. DeVita couldn’t identify anyone in the grouping. Her husband had noticed nothing because he had been driving. Another slim reinforcement of a crumbling line, it heartened Demakos and unsettled Lyon.
The defense would have to improvise. The next morning, accompanied by Irwin Blye, Alice Crimmins marched into the courthouse pressroom and made a public appeal for someone to come forward to help her. She pleaded for anyone who had been on the mall that morning to contact her. Lyon remained in his office while Alice made the appeal.
Judge Balbach was furious. He brought Lyon into his chambers and threatened to clap Mrs. Crimmins into prison. Lyon said it was all an innocent mistake and it wouldn’t happen again. The attorney had decided that the risk was worth it. If Mrs. DeVita’s testimony remained unchallenged, his case was wrecked.
That afternoon a chubby young salesman named Marvin Weinstein called Lyon’s office and said he had something interesting to tell him. Weinstein lived in Massapequa, and Irwin Blye, the private detective, drove out to interview him. A day later Weinstein was on the stand. He too, he said, had been on the mall that morning, walking under Sophie’s window.
LYON: Who was with you?
WEINSTEIN: My wife, my son and my daughter . . . and my dog.
LYON: How tall is your wife?
WEINSTEIN: Approximately five feet two-and-a-half.
LYON: And how old was your son?
WEINSTEIN: Three and a half.
LYON: How old was your daughter?
WEINSTEIN: Two.
Weinstein said his dog might have appeared pregnant, and that he had carried his daughter under his arm “like a sack” when he walked to his car under Sophie’s window. When Mrs. Weinstein appeared in the courtroom, she looked very much like Alice Crimmins. On the stand, she too swore that they had been on the mall that evening.
Anthony King, the man the Weinsteins said they had visited on the night of the disappearance, thought that the visit had taken place on another night. Herb Lyon countered by bringing out that Weinstein and King had been business partners and were now enemies. The business had folded, leaving both men embittered. It was not clear what point had been established, beyond an obvious clouding of the case. The jury was forced to choose between identical sets of witnesses. They could believe Mrs. DeVita, who seemed almost impacted with anger. Or they could accept the Weinsteins, a young couple who
seemed to live and dress beyond their means. The prosecutors campaigned against the Weinsteins, hinting that he owed money to gambling casinos in Las Vegas and had worked his way clear by testifying for Alice Crimmins. The Weinsteins would claim later that they had opened themselves to years of “official harassment” by coming forward.
Lyon had one more tactic. The prosecution’s case was full of rumor, innuendo, and sly secrets. In one way or another, it had been suggested to the jury that the actual killer of little Eddie was known, that he was a man serving a fifteen-year term in Atlanta Penitentiary on a drug charge. Lyon wanted to stop the whispers and so he called Vincent Colabella as a witness. It was another moment from another era. Colabella, the smirking gangster escorted into the courtroom in handcuffs between federal marshals, seemed utterly out of place in this domestic melodrama. Colabella, predictably, denied any part in the killing, chuckling on the witness stand, swearing that he had never seen Alice Crimmins before.
Demakos was furious. He felt as if his nose were being tweaked and he stalked the corridor afterward, muttering. Why hadn’t he offered Colabella a deal to testify, as he had Alice Crimmins? a reporter asked.
“I wouldn’t offer a killer a deal,” he replied sharply.
In his summation, Lyon dismissed Joe Rorech as the “man with the lisping mouth and evil heart.” Sophie Earomirski was an “irresponsible neurotic.” He spoke sadly about the need for the limelight and how the truth was often not a trick of selective testimony. Rorech wanted revenge and a way out of his financial and legal traps, while Sophie needed a way to reclaim her credibility.
Jerry Piering had his motives, too, he said. Piering he called inept. “Piering never made a note about dust. The Police Department needs more space every day for the volumes of reports it must make, and Detective Piering doesn’t make a note. He goes before the grand jury and he never mentions the dust.”
Lyon paused and shook his head in disbelief.