Just Revenge

by Alan M. Dershowitz

  “Incredible.”

  “It’s amazing what you can find in those old books.”

  “Now tell me how Marcelus Prandus died.”

  As Max described Prandus’s suicide in detail, Abe worried how a jury might react to the agonized death Prandus had suffered.

  “I’ve been in this business for thirty years, but I’ve never heard anything like this. I’ve got to ask you one question before we go any farther. Where is Prandus’s body?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? Where did you leave it?”

  “In the cabin, but I made an anonymous call to Prandus’s son and told him where the body was. I assume they have found it, and that it’s in some funeral home.” Max fixed Abe with an inquiring gaze. “What do we do now?”

  “We do nothing,” Abe replied automatically. “They may never figure this thing out. You, me, and Danielle may be the only three people in the world who ever learn of your brilliant, if diabolical, plot. I can’t disclose what you told me, and if you and Danielle keep your mouths shut, maybe it will remain an unsolved crime.”

  “That would be fine with me. There was only one person who had to see justice done, and he saw it with his very last vision in this world. As far as I’m concerned, justice has been achieved.”

  “I doubt the Prandus family would agree,” Abe said as a worried look crossed his face.

  Chapter 30

  WHO DONE IT?

  “May God accept the soul of this wonderful husband, father, grandfather, and friend. His years in America were truly the American dream.”

  As Paul listened to the glowing eulogy, he tried desperately to control his growing rage toward the man who had killed his father. He sat in the front pew of the small Lithuanian church with fists clenched. He searched his mind for clues—anything—that would have alerted him to his father’s dark past. He wondered how many others noticed that Father Grilius had not said a word about Marcelus Prandus’s youth in Lithuania.

  The eulogy confirmed Paul’s strengthening belief that his father’s death could be explained only by what he had done during the war. The videos now made even more sense. Papa had killed someone’s family, and now that same someone had taken revenge by making it appear that he had killed Papa’s entire family.

  Paul also noticed that Father Grilius had not mentioned the cause of Papa’s death—suicide was a strong taboo among Lithuanian Catholics. Dr. Michelle Burden’s autopsy concluded that the cause of death was “self-administered cyanide poisoning.” Traces of the drug had been found on his father’s right thumb and forefinger. Dr. Burden was certain of her conclusion, as she had told Paul after her preliminary analysis. Paul would never forget how his father looked, stretched out on the cold steel table of the morgue, naked, eyes open, mouth agape, skin blue. On the floor of the cabin he had at least looked human. On the morgue slab he had looked like a medical school cadaver about to be cut open as part of a grisly experiment. He could not get the picture of his dear father out of his mind. The vision would stay with him forever, unless he brought the killer to justice.

  “I failed you. I should have been able to figure out the motive before they killed him,” Freddy said with a look of anguish as they left the church and walked toward Paul’s law office.

  “It’s my fault,” said Paul. “I held back.”

  “You held back?!” Freddy shouted. “This isn’t some kind of poker game. What did you hold back?”

  “I held back what I suspected from the very beginning—that Papa did some bad things during the war. I couldn’t face it. I was ashamed to tell you. I screwed up.”

  “What do you mean, you suspected? What did he say to you?”

  “It’s not what he said. It’s what he didn’t say. There were always gaps in his stories. I never probed. I didn’t want to know. We lawyers call it willful blindness.”

  Freddy realized he was pushing his friend too hard, and he shifted from investigator to friend mode. “It’s only natural. He was your father.”

  “And we used to be so alike. But when I enrolled in the European history course at Holy Cross, the professor lectured about Lithuania during the Holocaust. I didn’t want to hear more, and I dropped the course. I had heard enough to know that I wasn’t getting the straight poop from Papa. Yet I never pressed him. I did change my attitude toward him, though! I didn’t want to be like him anymore. Maybe I even overreacted. I didn’t want to have to deal with it.”

  “It’s understandable. Are you still holding anything back? Think, now, think.”

  “I’m drawing a complete blank.”

  “Think local. Think recent. Let’s start with the anonymous call. Can you recall anything about the voice?”

  “It sounded nervous.”

  “Wouldn’t you if you had just killed someone?”

  “There was something else.”

  “What—what?”

  “A very slight accent. Not as bad as Papa’s, but it was there. You know the kind that speaks English a little too well—that tries too hard to sound natural?”

  “Yeah, yeah, go on. What else? Did it sound at all familiar?”

  Paul thought for a minute. Then suddenly he remembered. It began as a vague shard of memory. Then it became clear.

  “The old guy at the AIDS walk. Dad’s friend. It was him.”

  “Paul, what the hell are you blabbering about? What old guy? What AIDS walk?”

  Paul told Freddy about being approached on Memorial Drive a few weeks earlier.

  “You gave a stranger your father’s phone number, just like that?”

  “He seemed like a harmless old guy. Gave me his name.”

  “Do you remember it?”

  “I wrote it down,” Paul said as he leafed through his pocket calendar. “Yeah, here it is. Lukus Liatus.”

  “That sounds more Lithuanian than Jewish. Probably a phony.”

  “He couldn’t have planned it. His meeting with me was pure chance.”

  “How did he spot you?”

  “I’ve seen pictures of Papa when he was my age. We looked a lot alike.”

  “So he’s just sitting there, contemplating his navel, when you walk by—and he sees your father.”

  “Yes. That’s what happened. So what do we have?”

  “Let’s put it together,” Freddy said in his best investigator’s tone of voice. “We’ve got an old Jewish man from Vilnius, who probably lives around Cambridge, had one hell of a grudge against your father, and probably knew someone named Liatus.”

  “It doesn’t sound like much.”

  “Are you kidding? It’s a gold mine. And we’ve got more.”

  Paul stopped walking and looked at Freddy.

  “This old guy couldn’t have pulled this off by himself. Probably had an accomplice. Someone younger, stronger, tougher. Maybe his son—someone your age, Paul. There’s something else.”

  “Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  “Get the video.”

  Paul put his copy of the video of his family’s “death” into the office machine and played it.

  “Stop it there,” Freddy ordered. “Now run it back a few seconds. . . . Stop it. Right there, on the driver of the car. Was that the guy you met in Cambridge?”

  “Could be. I can’t really tell. It’s too blurry. It could be.”

  “It’s a lead,” said Freddy. “We can probably also get the make of the car.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  “Only if I have the facts. I can’t work in a vacuum. Now, fast-forward to the shootings. . . . There. Look, the shooter. It’s not the same person. Younger. Could be a woman. Can’t tell for sure. The face isn’t visible, but it looks like a woman to me. Another good lead. Now we have to turn these leads into a specific name by going to the same place the killer may have gone to try to get your father.”

  “Tell me where!”

  “The Office of Special Investigations in Washington. The Nazi hunters. They know who you
r father’s victims were, and his killer probably tried to blow the whistle on your father after he met you—to get him deported. They probably told him it would take a few years.”

  “And the killer figured my father would die before he would be brought to justice.”

  “Right. So he decided to take the law into his own hands.”

  “Get me the name of the damn whistle-blower,” said Paul, hurrying Freddy toward his office.

  “You’ll have to make the call. They won’t talk to an investigator. But they will talk to a lawyer, especially the son of a deceased victim.”

  Chapter 31

  USING THE NAZI HUNTERS

  “Martin Mandel here. What can I do for you?” answered the lawyer as he picked up the phone.

  “My name is Paul Prandus. I’m Marcelus Prandus’s son and I’m also a lawyer.”

  “Are you his lawyer?”

  “My father is dead. One of your victims killed him.”

  There was silence at the other end of the phone, then a chilly, “Let’s start over, Mr. Prandus. The victims were your father’s, not mine.”

  “You know what I mean,” Paul said curtly. “I need to know which victims may have complained about my father.”

  “You have a right to know. We opened a file on your father a couple of weeks ago, after receiving a call from a lawyer whose elderly client learned that Prandus was living in Salem. He apparently met one of his relatives on the street.”

  “I’m that relative, Mr. Mandel. And my chance meeting with that man may have led to my father’s death.”

  “Wasn’t your father dying of cancer? How did he die?”

  “Technically, he committed suicide.”

  “That’s really unusual. The kinds of people we prosecute never commit suicide. Their victims do,” Mandel said with an edge.

  “My father’s suicide resulted from a diabolical scheme hatched by the man who blew the whistle on my father. It’s a long story.”

  “I’ve got time. Tell me.”

  Paul angrily recounted the story of the kidnapping and the videotapes—as he and Freddy had pieced it together—to a startled Martin Mandel.

  “I must tell you, Mr. Prandus, that one part of me—the son of a Sobibor survivor—is thrilled that Professor Menuchen managed in a few weeks to do what I and the entire Department of Justice have been unable to accomplish in the decades we have been in the Nazi-hunting business—proportional justice to a Nazi criminal. Another part of me—the Justice Department lawyer, sworn to uphold the law—understands that we are in the law business, not the revenge business. As much as I personally loathe your late father and what he did, if what you say is true, I will be on your side.”

  “If you really mean that, then catch the son of a bitch. It’s your job.”

  “Don’t lecture me, Mr. Prandus. Send me the videotape by FedEx. I’ll do my job.”

  Chapter 32

  A TIME TO BE ARRESTED

  “This morning, we will be exploring the meaning of Ecclesiastes’ wonderful poem about the seasons of life. The words have been set to music hundreds of times. They have been inscribed on monuments. They are, perhaps, the most recognizable pages in the entire book. ‘To everything there is a season. A time to be born. A time to die . . .’ ”

  As Professor Menuchen recited these words to his class, three tall men with crew cuts strode into the wood-paneled classroom at the Harvard Divinity School. Approaching the lectern, the oldest announced, “Max Menuchen, you’re under arrest for murder. Everyone else stay seated until we leave.”

  There were gasps from the students as their elderly teacher was handcuffed and read his rights. When the FBI agent mentioned “right to counsel,” Max told a student in the front row, “Please call the lawyer Abraham Ringel.”

  Max knew this moment would come. He had not known when, but he’d been certain that he would be brought to justice for what he had done.

  “People like us get caught, unlike the Nazis,” he had said to Danielle.

  Danielle had replied, “And if we do, it will be your fault for making that call to his son. Without that call they wouldn’t have found Prandus’s body until the spring.”

  “That would not have been fair to his family,” Max had answered. “They have a right to give him a proper Christian burial, to know he is dead, to move on. They are not the guilty ones.” So Max had made the call that he knew—deep down—would probably lead to his arrest. He had also insisted that the tape be left in the machine, so that Prandus’s son would know why his father had killed himself—even if that increased the likelihood that he would become a suspect.

  As he was being led away, Max turned to his students and, with a wry smile, said, “And there is a time for justice. Now is that time. I welcome this season.”

  Part VI

  Preparing for Justice

  Chapter 33

  RINGEL FOR THE DEFENSE AUGUST 1999

  “I feel like Spielberg on the first day of filming,” Abe Ringel whispered to Rendi as they walked hand in hand through the mob of reporters who seemed to follow Abe wherever he was trying a case. The opening day of a high-profile trial was always exciting to Abe. He was in charge. This was his time, his action, his element, and he loved every second of it. It was he who decided which witnesses to call, which jurors to accept, which cards to play. Despite his long experience as a criminal defense lawyer, Abe never became blasé about a new trial.

  The opening of this trial carried a special excitement for Abe. For the first time in his life he was defending someone he loved, someone he cared about personally as well as professionally. Abe had always mocked his old friend and sometime rival, the late William Kunstler, who used to say he only represented people he loved. Now, as he prepared to represent his dear friend Max Menuchen, Abe understood how much more satisfying it was to be an advocate on behalf of a flesh-and-blood person whom he loved than for an abstract principle in which he believed. Abe also understood how much higher the stakes were when a mistake meant not merely that a client would go to jail, but also that a dear friend might never experience freedom again.

  Abe and Rendi walked halfway up the steps of the old Dedham courthouse, the same stately white building in which Sacco and Vanzetti had been tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Although the crime for which Max had been indicted had taken place in western Massachusetts, the trial had been transferred to a venue more convenient to all the participants—and the horde of media that would be covering it live on television.

  Menuchen was being prosecuted by the state of Massachusetts—which still quaintly called itself a commonwealth—even though the crime had been investigated by Justice Department lawyers on the basis of a lead provided by the Office of Special Investigations. It was, at least technically, an ordinary state crime of kidnapping and murder.

  Danielle was to be tried separately as an accessory, after Max’s trial. The prosecutor wanted to call her as a witness against Max, and he could not do that at a joint trial, because of her privilege against self-incrimination. The police had learned of Danielle’s expertise in video photography. They also found out that she had a weekend home near where Prandus’s body had been found and that she was away from Harvard during the days Prandus was missing. Since neither defendant had been willing to speak to the police, the cases against both Max and Danielle were entirely circumstantial. The case against Max was far stronger, since his motive was so clear and the video image of the old man, though fuzzy, was a closer match to Max than the even fuzzier image of the “shooter” was to Danielle. The prosecution believed that Abe Ringel would have to put Max on the stand to explain his actions, and if he did, Max would be forced to disclose Danielle’s precise role in the crime.

  As if by prearrangement, Abe stopped on the eighth step, turned, and began to speak to the rolling cameras.

  “On trial today is not only Max Menuchen, a survivor of the Holocaust, whose entire family was murdered by the so-called victim of this alleged crime. It is not
only the killers of the Holocaust, such as this so-called victim. It is the entire civilized world, which failed to bring so many of these killers—such as Marcelus Prandus—to justice. This trial may be one of the most important educational experiences since the end of the war. The Germans had the Nuremberg trials, the Israelis had the Eichmann trial, the French had the Barbie trial, and the Italians had the Priebke trial. The United States has never, until now, had a trial involving the Holocaust. Today that trial begins.”

  “Mr. Ringel, Mr. Ringel!” the shouts began. Abe pointed to Mary Cooper, the New York Times Boston correspondent.

  “Mr. Ringel, it sounds as if you plan to put the victim, Marcelus Prandus, on trial. Is that fair, considering the fact that he is not here to defend himself?”

  “The only person actually on trial in that courtroom”—Abe turned and pointed at the courthouse—“is Max Menuchen. He is the only person who could end up in prison for the rest of his life if he is convicted. You will hear evidence about what Marcelus Prandus did, and the prosecutor will be his advocate—if he dares to be. And now, if you will excuse me, I must visit my client, Max Menuchen, who is in jail, having been wrongfully—in my view—denied bail.”

  “Mr. Ringel, Mr. Ringel!” The shouts continued as Abe and Rendi entered the courtroom, went downstairs to the holding cell, and waited for Max to arrive, by locked bus, from the Charles Street jail in downtown Boston.

  Within a few minutes the back door to the courthouse opened and an armed guard escorted Max into his holding cell. Abe and Rendi were allowed into Max’s cell, and they embraced Max silently.

  “It’s absolutely remarkable,” Rendi said, trying to break the uneasy silence, “that you can manage to look dignified even in that bright orange prison suit. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you without a tie and jacket.” Max did not answer.