Blind Faith

by Joe McGinniss

  “Bob! Dan! You see out there on the dance floor? You guys aren’t going to believe this but I think I just saw L’Heureux!”

  Gladstone stood up to get a better look, but the first recognizable person he saw was not L’Heureux, but Gary Hamilton, the blond, silent, cowboy-booted member of L’Heureux’s law firm.

  Hamilton, peering back through the gloom, spotted Gladstone, and with him the other two detectives. As Gladstone watched, he ran onto the dance floor in search of…yes…yes, it was…unmistakably…Ferlin L’Heureux. In the flesh. All 250 pounds of it.

  After a moment’s whispered conversation, the two men walked quickly off the dance floor and headed toward a rear exit.

  “Son of a bitch,” Gladstone said, “I bet they thought we came here to arrest him.”

  “Wish we could oblige,” O’Brien said.

  “We’re not ready,” Gladstone said.

  “Yeah, but we can bust his chops a little bit,” O’Brien said. “Follow him around for a while. That’s one hell of a law firm he’s got, by the way. Did you see that clown he had with him?”

  “Hamilton,” Gladstone said. “The guy who never opened his mouth. Even for down here, he doesn’t look much like a lawyer to me.”

  The three detectives paid for their drinks and ran out to the parking lot, hoping to spot L’Heureux and Hamilton as they left.

  “There he goes,” Mancuso shouted. “I see them both. They’re pulling away in that Cadillac.”

  “Okay,” Gladstone said, “let’s play tag for a while.”

  The three of them ran to their rented car.

  “Holy shit!” O’Brien shouted. “I don’t believe this.”

  The right rear tire of their car was flat.

  “He must have just done it,” Gladstone said.

  O’Brien bent down and picked up a ballpoint pen. “Yup,” he said. “Just hold this against the end of the valve for thirty seconds, there goes your air.”

  “How did he know it was our car?” Mancuso asked.

  “Hamilton, that rhinestone cowboy, must have seen it yesterday when we drove over to do the search,” O’Brien said.

  “Son of a bitch,” Gladstone said. “He picked the right rear tire, too.”

  “Well, of course,” O’Brien said. “That’s the area where he’s had the most experience.”

  The next morning, Gladstone got a phone call from Toms River. He was told, first, that Felice had given a further statement to detectives, and, second, that Marshall had staged an apparently fake suicide attempt at the Best Western Motel in Lakewood, leaving behind an envelope that appeared to contain a tape cassette. The envelope was currently being held in the prosecutor’s office, pending issuance of a warrant that would permit it to be opened and the tape to be played.

  “Gentlemen,” Gladstone said, “I think it’s time to go home.”

  16

  On the morning of Thursday, September 27, New Jersey and Philadelphia newspapers carried the news of Myers’s indictment by an Ocean County grand jury. News of the arrest itself several days earlier had not been reported. So September 27 was the first day on which the public knew that genuine progress in the investigation was being made.

  It was on the same morning, after news of the indictment had been printed and broadcast, that the Ocean County prosecutor received a phone call from attorney Anthony Trammel, who was representing Felice Rosenberg.

  In the words of the report prepared by the prosecutor’s office, Trammel “suggested” that detectives “respond to his law office” in Trenton for the purpose of reinterviewing Mrs. Rosenberg, whom, he said, “may possess certain information which would be helpful to the investigation into the death of Maria Marshall.”

  Upon their arrival in Trenton, detectives were required to go through a preliminary screening with an associate of Mr. Trammel’s before being permitted in Mrs. Rosenberg’s presence. As McGuire wrote in his report, he “assured [Trammel’s associate] that Mrs. Rosenberg was not a primary target of this investigation.”

  This was a little different from having the Skyhawk flagged down on the parkway and being dragged into the prosecutor’s office in Toms River and being fingerprinted and booked.

  Whether in return for the heightened degree of courtesy and respect extended to her, or simply because she felt that as a responsible citizen it was her duty to assist law enforcement personnel in the performance of their duties, Felice in Trenton on September 27 was far more forthcoming than she had been in Toms River three weeks earlier, before Raymond DiOrio’s brief involvement in the case.

  She began by saying that Rob had become “very nervous” the previous Friday night, after being asked by McGuire whether he knew L’Heureux or Grandshaw.

  The next day, she said, she had gone with him to meet with his new lawyer, Carl Seely. Also present had been a private investigator named Gary Hamilton, whom Seely was employing for this case. The meeting had lasted several hours, she said, during which time she’d been required to remain in Seely’s kitchen so she could not overhear what was being discussed.

  On the way home, Marshall, who had been extremely tense and subdued before the meeting, seemed almost exuberant. He told her that Hamilton, the investigator, would soon be leaving for Shreveport to “come up with alternative reasons” for any contact he’d had with “Ernie Grandshaw.” He told her he could not elaborate further because Seely had insisted that he not share “Shreveport information” with her.

  The next day, she said, Rob had received the message from Roby on her answering machine about the urgent call from “Grandshaw” in Louisiana. She said he “became visibly shaken and turned pale.” He told her he “didn’t know what to do,” but thought he should speak to Seely before returning the call. She said she had become “concerned” over his “obvious distress” and had asked him why he was so upset.

  The story he told her was the story of the bet on the NBA games. He’d met a man named Myers at the Riccios’ party, had wagered on the outcome of a basketball game they were watching at the bar, and had lost the bet. He’d had to pay in two installments, the first of twenty-five hundred dollars and the second of three thousand. When wiring the money the second time, he said, he’d used a fictitious name. He also said he had wired the money to a party named Ernie Grandshaw rather than to Myers himself for reasons that were simply too complicated to get into, but involved other business dealings he was engaged in down there.

  She also reported that Rob and Carl Seely each made phone calls to Shreveport on Sunday in response to the message received on her answering machine and that at least one of the calls had been to a Shreveport lawyer representing someone connected to the case, and that another had been to that lawyer’s father, who was also, apparently, a lawyer.

  She said Rob was so “desperate” for money that he had already begun to sell Maria’s jewelry. She even gave the name of the Toms River jeweler with whom he’d placed it on consignment. She also said that he’d brought all of Maria’s furs to her house and had asked her to sell them in New York, along with some of her own, in order to raise additional cash.

  It had been her earlier impression, she said, that Rob had been only $100,000 in debt. Since then, she’d come to learn that his indebtedness was actually $200,000. According to McGuire’s report, “she assumed this is from gambling and losing at the Golden Nugget and Harrah’s Casino in Atlantic City.” In addition, she said, he had used at least $50,000 of the money obtained through the second mortgage on his home to buy stock which had subsequently lost more than half its value.

  She also said that Rob had confessed to her that he had signed Maria’s name not only on the home equity loan application but also on at least one of the insurance policies he’d taken out on her life.

  At 7 P.M. Tuesday, she said, Rob had called her to say that he had “good news” from Shreveport. But by this time, she said, she had become “increasingly nervous” about Rob. Thus, when he came to her beach condo later that night and started to apologi
ze for fabricating the story about the NBA bet, and offered to tell her the truth, she asked him to leave.

  He came back a second time and again she asked him to leave.

  The next day, Wednesday, just one day before she decided to make this statement, she said she’d come home from work to find a cassette and letter waiting for her at her door. On the tape, Rob again apologized for lying about Shreveport. Since then, she’d had no contact with him.

  Then, again, she described the conversation months earlier into which she’d interjected the name of Patsy Racine. She said it had occurred “during November or December” of 1983, when Rob was feeling pressured by Maria’s suspicions regarding the affair. “I swear,” he had told her, “if I thought there was a way of getting rid of her, I would. Do you know somebody who would do it?”

  In this recounting, there was nothing jocular about the remark. In fact, as McGuire wrote in his report, “according to Mrs. Rosenberg, there is no doubt in her mind that Marshall meant to murder his wife.”

  One area, however, about which Felice apparently did not volunteer information and about which she was not questioned, was the morning of September 6, when, as Gladstone had already discerned from his examination of the phone company records, she had received a phone call from Marshall at 9:46 A.M.

  She had called him back at 9:48 A.M. from a different phone at Seaview Regional and they’d talked for ten minutes—or until the call from L’Heureux at the Airport Motor Inn had come in at 9:59.

  What had been the purpose of Marshall’s call?

  Why had Felice chosen to leave the phone she took the call on and, uncharacteristically, go to a different phone to return it?

  What had they talked about during those ten minutes, at a time when Rob already knew, from Myers, that “Ernie Grandshaw” had come back north to finish his “investigation”?

  These were questions that apparently did not interest the Ocean County prosecutor, a man who had been put in his job by Felice’s close friend Raymond DiOrio and who was now hoping that DiOrio would arrange for him to be a judge. Whether this lack of interest was in any way connected to Raymond DiOrio’s brief involvement in the case could not, of course, be determined from official reports.

  Back in his office on Monday, October 1, Bob Gladstone heard and read the full report of Felice’s second interview.

  “So that’s who he was,” he said to McGuire. “Hamilton. A private dick down there to cook up a story with L’Heureux that would get them both off the hook. I knew that son of a bitch was no lawyer, not even a Louisiana lawyer.”

  “I knew he wasn’t a cowboy, either,” O’Brien said.

  “Wonder what the ‘good news’ from Shreveport was Tuesday night,” Gladstone said.

  “He must’ve heard that Hamilton and L’Heureux had started cooking.”

  “Cooking what? Jambalaya? Crawfish pie?”

  “Nah,” O’Brien said, “that’s the bayou. That shit town we were in, that’s really more like part of Texas. The bad part of Texas. Chicken-fried steak and a six-pack, that’s about it.”

  “So Tuesday night he gets good news from Shreveport,” Gladstone said.

  “And Thursday he checks into his favorite motel.”

  “And tries to check out.”

  “Or pretends to.”

  “So he has an excuse for creating a farewell tape.”

  “Which he’s actually dying to get into our hands.”

  “Because?” Gladstone said.

  “Because you know what’s gonna be on that tape when we finally get the fucking warrant and we can play it?” O’Brien said. “There’s gonna be his ‘alternative reasons’ for jacking around with Ferlin L’Heureux all summer long.”

  Not long after Rob had checked into room 16 of the Best Western on the afternoon of September 27, the motel’s desk clerk, who recognized him from his many prior visits, and who was aware of the published speculation that he was considered a suspect in the murder of his wife, notified the Ocean County prosecutor’s office that he was there.

  That he would check into a motel room—his special motel room—alone seemed sufficiently peculiar so that a team of detectives was dispatched to the Best Western to keep him under surveillance. Arrangements were made at the front desk to permit three of them to occupy room 17, immediately adjacent to his.

  Thus, when Rob left his room at 10:45 to walk down the hall to buy a Coke, a detective observed him.

  And at 11:30, when he walked to the front desk in the lobby, carrying an envelope with him, a detective followed. The detective observed Rob put the envelope into a tray that rested on the front desk.

  The detective, whose name was James Vandermeer, remained in the lobby after Rob left to return to his room. He walked over to the open tray, into which outgoing motel mail was placed for later pickup by a U.S. mail carrier, and noted that on the back of the sealed envelope Rob had written, “To Be Opened in the Event of My Death.”

  Turning it over, he saw that it was addressed to someone named Eugene Leahy in Wilmington, Delaware.

  Vandermeer took the envelope from the tray and returned to room 17. The envelope was not opened by the detectives, but the message on the back caused them to consider the possibility that Rob might be planning to take his own life. They called the Lakewood Police Department emergency squad and asked that an ambulance be dispatched to the Best Western to stand by in the parking lot. Then, at regular intervals, they began calling Rob’s room, hanging up when he would answer.

  At 12:55 A.M. they got no answer and, using a passkey given them by the desk clerk, entered his room. There, they found him asleep on the bed. Next to him, on a night table, was a glass filled with a foamy mixture of Coca-Cola and the contents of fifty Restoril sleeping capsules, each of which had been opened by hand so the contents could be poured into the glass.

  Rob woke up almost immediately and told detectives that he’d stirred the mixture with his finger, licked his finger, and fallen asleep. He said he’d been planning to kill himself at exactly the same moment that his wife had died on the parkway but apparently he’d overslept.

  They found a tape recorder, three cassettes and a photograph of Maria and her three sons on the floor next to the bed. These they collected, along with the Restoril bottle and the glass containing the mixture.

  They took Rob to Point Pleasant Hospital, where he was admitted for observation as a possible suicide attempt, even though he had ingested none of the liquid and physically there was nothing wrong with him.

  The envelope containing the tape to Gene Leahy was taken to the prosecutor’s office, along with the three other tapes, which turned out to be one each to Roby, Chris and John.

  And on Tuesday, October 2, proper authorization having been obtained, Gladstone, O’Brien and Mancuso gathered around a tape recorder to hear what Rob Marshall had to say.

  “Where should we start?” Gladstone said.

  “Let’s do the boys first, get those out of the way,” O’Brien said. “Shit, he didn’t even put them in an envelope. What the hell were they supposed to do, drive to the Best Western and pick them up?”

  “Saving postage, Dan. The guy’s in debt,” Gladstone said. Then he put the cassette marked for Roby into the machine.

  “As I lay here,” Rob’s voice began, “looking at your beautiful face, with your mother right next to it, and Chris and John, I can only think of how much I love you and the fact that I have loved you almost as long as Mom.

  “Roby, I hope that someday you’ll understand that I just could not go through this ordeal. You know that I wouldn’t hurt Mom, but there’s so much stuff that so many people try to make it seem as though I would, and I feel the inevitable will happen and I will be dragged through the courts and found guilty. And I can’t bear that—not for me or you—so I’m taking the shortcut, buddy, to be with Mom, I hope. I know where she is and I will pray to God this evening that He lets me be with her.

  “I know this makes it awful tough on you because yo
u’re left to deal with everything, but I know how strong you are and I know you can do it. You’re the oldest and the biggest and I want you to be strong for everybody—be a leader. Finish school. Go back to Villanova in January and kick ass, as Chris says. Do the best you possibly can do. Go to law school, get your own practice, whatever, and go for it, Roby. I know you said you want to be President someday, and God, I think you can. I believe you can.

  “But whatever you do, do the best, do the best you can do. Give it everything. Never forget your family, and that’s talking about me and Mom and Chris and John, and me and the Leahys, and all your cousins, and the nice people like Sal Coccaro, who’s been so helpful.

  “Roby, I’m so proud of you. You’ve grown up to be such an intelligent, bright young man. I just know that you’re going to do so well for yourself. By the way, I told Uncle Gene to arrange to purchase the Mustang for you so you’ll have a car. Roby, I’m so proud of you. Please be strong and never forget how much I love you. I love you so much.”

  The tape ended.

  “Found guilty, huh?” Gladstone said. “Guess he doesn’t have much confidence in Seely.”

  “I like the Mustang,” O’Brien said. “Now it’s all starting to make sense. You kill your wife so the insurance money can buy your kid a new car.”

  “You know how it is around the country club, Dan. You’ve got to keep up appearances.”

  He put the second cassette, the one for Chris, in the machine.

  “I’m lying here,” Rob began, “looking at your beautiful face, in the same frame with your mother and Roby and John. You look so handsome. You’re getting so tall—so big.

  “I’ll never forget that time many summers ago when something happened to you and you started swimming like a dart. I looked at you and it was as though someone was pulling you with a rope. You had found the secret, it seemed, and you have gotten better, so much better, ever since.

  “Mom was so proud of you. She loved to see you in the water. So proud of what you’re doing at Lehigh. She was just so pumped for you—so pleased that you got in and that you’re happy there—and so am I. I’m just tickled and I know that you’re going to do well—not only in the pool but with your studies.