Here, Albert again contradicted himself. Earlier in the day, he had told Keahon that Gary didn’t run off until after he was first stabbed by Ricky, whose confession also reflected these events in that order.
“And where was Jimmy all this time?” Naiburg asked.
“By the fire,” Albert replied.
“So, you didn’t see Jimmy holding Gary down while Ricky killed him?”
“No.”
“In Jimmy’s statement to the police,” Naiburg continued, “he said he held Gary in a headlock while Ricky stabbed him.”
“It never happened like that,” Albert said dismissively.
“Then why did he tell the police that it did?” Naiburg pressed.
“I don’t know—ask him.”
Judge Copertino brought the day to a halt. Albert had testified for nearly five hours by this point, and Copertino felt everyone could use a break. As Keahon was gathering his papers from the table, a young woman with long blond hair approached him.
“You know, Mr. Keahon,” she said, “I really don’t like how you are handling this. If things keep going this way, he’s going to get away with it.”
Keahon was well aware of this. He had just watched Albert’s contradictory testimony deal his case a major blow, and he certainly didn’t need to be reminded of this—especially by some stranger.
“And who are you?” Keahon snapped as he turned to face the woman.
She wiped a tear from her eye and said, “I’m Gary’s sister.”
Chapter 59
ALBERT QUINONES RETURNED TO THE courthouse early the next morning to conclude his testimony. This second day of questioning quickly proved to be just as disastrous as the first. Back on the witness stand, Albert further confused everyone by suddenly claiming Ricky had never made Gary say he loved Satan, despite him—along with both Ricky’s and Jimmy’s confessions—initially stating otherwise. In light of these new contradictions, Naiburg asked Albert if any of his recollections from that night were real or simply a drug-fueled hallucination.
“It’s real,” Albert replied.
“But how can you be sure, Mr. Quinones?” Naiburg pressed. “Weren’t you on mescaline that night?”
“Yeah,” Albert replied, “but you don’t see that kind of stuff on mescaline.”
“And what did you see that night?”
“Lots of things,” Albert replied. “I saw the trees bending down, trying to grab me. There was a swarm of bees chasing me. I even saw a lion.”
“And how do you know the bees weren’t real?”
“I had no sting marks on me.”
“And what about this lion?” Naiburg asked. “Was the lion really there?”
“No,” Albert laughed. “There are no lions in the woods of Northport.”
Naiburg decided to jump on this and test Albert’s connection to reality.
“Oh?” he exclaimed. “Huh. Didn’t you hear? There was a circus in town—a lion escaped.”
Albert fell right into Naiburg’s trap.
“You mean the lion was real?!” he exclaimed, wide-eyed.
Naiburg smiled.
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
* * *
Later, outside the courthouse, a very embarrassed Keahon was left to defend his decision to offer someone as unreliable as Albert Quinones immunity in exchange for such flawed testimony.
“I had to call him before the jury because he was the only eyewitness,” he told the crowd of reporters. “We have a sufficient case without this witness. . . .”
Keahon’s return of confidence, sincere or feigned, hinged on the upcoming appearance of Suffolk County Police Detective Louis Rodriguez. Rodriguez had taken the second, more incriminating statement from Jimmy on the day of his arrest, and Keahon hoped some no-nonsense testimony from a law enforcement professional would help tip the jury’s opinion in his favor.
When Rodriguez entered the witness box on Friday, April 12, Keahon asked the detective to recount his introduction to the case. Rodriguez discussed how he was asked by Detective Sergeant Richard Jensen to come in to work early on July 5, 1984. When he arrived at the Suffolk County Police headquarters in Yaphank, Jensen asked Rodriguez to take Jimmy back to Aztakea Woods and have him photographed at the crime scene. As Rodriguez testified, large prints of these photos were brought into the courtroom and displayed for the jury to see. When the topic turned to the confession Rodriguez took from Jimmy, Keahon asked the detective to read the full statement aloud, which he did while Jimmy repeatedly shook his head in denial. After Rodriguez finished reading all four pages, Keahon asked the detective how he had convinced Jimmy to make this second statement.
“It just came to pass,” Rodriguez replied. “We were about to get out of the car when he told me, ‘Ricky did all the stabbing. I held him, but Ricky did all the stabbing.’ ”
“Thank you, Detective Rodriguez,” Keahon said. “I have no further questions.” He returned to his seat, beyond pleased with how effortlessly this round of questioning had transpired.
Again, Keahon had underestimated Naiburg’s resilience.
“Your Honor, could we have those enlarged photographs of the defendant brought back in, please?” Naiburg asked.
Judge Copertino agreed, and the full-color blowups of Jimmy at Aztakea were returned to the courtroom.
Naiburg drew Rodriguez’s attention to the shot of Jimmy pointing to where the campfire had been lit.
“Why was this photo taken, Detective Rodriguez?” he asked.
“To have a record of the site,” Rodriguez replied.
“And what about this one?” Naiburg asked, motioning toward the photograph of Jimmy pointing a stick at the shallow grave.
“To have a record,” Rodriguez repeated.
“But, Detective Rodriguez,” Naiburg replied, “hadn’t your department already taken nearly one hundred photographs of this very crime scene?”
“Yes,” Rodriguez said.
“Then what was the point in having more photographs taken with the defendant at the scene?” Naiburg asked.
“We needed them,” Rodriguez replied cryptically.
“Who needed them?”
“Detective Sergeant Jensen.”
“Did Detective Sergeant Jensen tell you to put the defendant in those photographs?
Rodriguez took his time answering.
“No,” he eventually replied.
“So, you just took it upon yourself to have Jimmy Troiano in these crime scene photographs?” he asked. “Is that correct, Detective Rodriguez?”
Rodriguez again hesitated.
“Yes,” he finally said.
“So,” Naiburg said, “you took the defendant, when he was not even a suspect yet, and put him in these photos for the sole purpose of eventually showing them to this jury, palming them off as evidence—didn’t you?”
Rodriguez didn’t answer.
“These photos are not evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of the defendant,” Naiburg continued. “They merely show that Jimmy knows how to stand still in front of a camera. They prove absolutely nothing else. These photos are totally unnecessary for the investigation of the case.”
Rodriguez remained silent.
“Do you admit that the only reason they were taken was so you could come in here and show the jury this ‘evidence,’ Detective Rodriguez?”
Rodriguez finally broke.
“Yes,” he admitted.
Keahon couldn’t believe his ears. Pointing out small inconsistencies was one thing, but highlighting a law enforcement officer’s questionable conduct to this degree bordered on the total annihilation of his credibility—and Naiburg wasn’t even finished with his cross-examination.
“Now, regarding this alleged ‘confession,’ ” Naiburg continued, “when did Jimmy supposedly admit to holding Lauwers down so that Kasso could stab him?”
“In the car,” Rodriguez replied. “Just before we got out to go into the woods.”
“And ye
t, instead of immediately going back to the precinct and writing this new statement,” Naiburg said, “you continued into the woods so that you could take those worthless photographs.”
He walked back to his table and picked up a printout of Jimmy’s second confession.
“ ‘I knew that Gary had to be killed or he would rat us all out if he lived,’ ” Naiburg said, reading the statement aloud. “ ‘I was glad because Gary could not leave those woods alive. I decided I didn’t care because Gary should not have taken the dust that belonged to Rick.’ Did my client tell you exactly when he had those thoughts, Detective Rodriguez?”
“No, he didn’t,” Rodriguez replied. “It could have been a day after the murder or two weeks later.”
“But you inserted them into his statement where you thought they should go,” Naiburg charged, slamming the paper back down on the table. “Isn’t that what happened?”
“As I recall,” Rodriguez said, “those recollections came toward the end of his statement. He just happened to think about them at that time.”
“Detective Rodriguez,” Naiburg asked, “if the defendant told you that he had seen trees melting during any of these events, would you have included that in his statement?”
“No,” Rodriguez laughed. “That just doesn’t make any sense.”
“Did the defendant display any confusion regarding the sequence of those events as he related them to you?” Naiburg asked.
“He was confused about when the cutting of the hair took place,” Rodriguez replied. “He could not remember if it was before or after Lauwers was first stabbed. He was also confused about when the kicking of the victim took place.”
“Detective Rodriguez, my client was also confused about when he picked up the knife and handed it to Kasso,” Naiburg said. “There’s absolutely no indication in either of Jimmy’s statements that he ever picked up the knife.”
“We talked about that,” Rodriguez admitted, “but I was afraid he would stop cooperating with us if we put it in the statement. He said he didn’t want to be seen holding the knife, so I left it out.”
“You left it out?!” Naiburg exclaimed. “Did you hear that?” he asked the jury. “He just left it out.”
Naiburg threw his hands up in exasperation and said, “No further questions, Your Honor.”
Keahon sat in his chair, completely beaten down by what had just happened. Naiburg had managed to make his two most important witnesses look like total fools on the witness stand. There was no one left for him to call. No additional piece of damning evidence against Jimmy Troiano. Nothing.
All Keahon could do now was hope that Naiburg’s upcoming defense witnesses were just as easy to discredit.
Chapter 60
ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, NAIBURG called his three defense witnesses for a lightning round of questioning. The first was a Northport letter carrier named John Thomas who claimed to have seen Jimmy trying to use the bathroom at the Trinity Episcopal Church as late as 11:20 p.m. on the night of the murder. Thomas insisted it was the defendant he had seen, claiming to have recognized him by his “slightly bowlegged” walk.
This recollection, for what it was worth, contradicted the prosecution’s insistence that Jimmy had entered Aztakea to help kill Gary Lauwers at ten p.m. Keahon was quick to point out that Thomas’s testimony did not change the fact that Jimmy was in the woods at two a.m. when Gary was killed, but in the end, both lawyers were chasing themselves down a blind alley. Thomas was talking about the night of June 16. Since the Suffolk County police hadn’t made any official correction once they realized they initially had the wrong date for the crime, both Naiburg and Keahon were unaware that Gary’s murder had actually taken place three nights later.
The second witness called to the stand was Dr. Jesse Bidanset, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at St. John’s University. While Dr. Bidanset admitted during questioning that he had never authored any medical papers on the effects of LSD, he did testify that his studies suggested to him that LSD users often experienced deficiencies in memory and could also be easily influenced by the power of suggestion.
When Dr. Bidanset was finished, Naiburg’s final witness, Philip Quinn, was led into the courtroom. Quinn was the director of Topic House, a Long Island substance abuse treatment facility, and like Dr. Bidanset before him, was there to testify regarding the effects of LSD. Quinn, however, possessed one advantage that Dr. Bidanset did not—prior LSD use. Once on the stand, Quinn would be able to base his assertions not only on his professional work but also his former personal drug habits.
Quinn started off by telling the court that he had carefully studied Jimmy’s two conflicting confessions, along with Albert Quinones’s statement, and determined that “none of these boys’ recollections are reliable. What they have sworn is true could only be illusion. Facts and incidents become muddled because the mind of the chronic abuser is already confused. LSD jumbles the mind, changes patterns in the sensory process, and events get reshuffled in the telling. The sequence of events is quite unreliable when you’re on LSD, which creates psychotic-like episodes. Now, that doesn’t mean the users are insane; just that the user senses that his mind functions are not normal, so he tries extra hard to appear normal.”
“So, what you are saying is that even while they are high,” Naiburg said, “they are attempting to cover it up so others won’t know?”
Quinn nodded.
“Exactly,” he said. “I have known abusers who have appeared normal, yet they were so high they were hallucinating out of control.”
Jimmy smiled and nodded along with Quinn. Fun times.
“What they do is attempt to put things in order—to make things seem logical,” Quinn continued. “They try to fill in the blanks, as it were, in their own mental gaps. They supply answers when, in reality, there are no answers.”
“Then how open is the drug user’s mind?” Naiburg asked. “How susceptible are they?”
“You can plant something in somebody’s mind very quickly and very easily,” Quinn replied. “Their mind is wide open to a lot of suggestion.”
“So, if the police told Jimmy that he had helped kill Gary Lauwers, and told him that while he was still under the influence of these drugs,” Naiburg said, “he would believe it to be fact?”
“Yes,” Quinn replied. “I suppose so.”
“I have no further questions, Your Honor,” Naiburg told Judge Copertino. “The defense rests.”
* * *
Despite calling only three witnesses and never allowing Jimmy himself to take the stand, Naiburg was confident in his strategy. When the trial reconvened three days later, on Monday, April 22, the two lawyers gave their final summations. Naiburg was the first to present his closing argument, giving an impassioned speech that lasted nearly two hours.
“There is, ladies and gentlemen, a devil in this case,” he told the jury, “and its name is LSD. It’s not that LSD caused the death of Gary Lauwers—although it might have—but rather it has taken the minds of the young men who worshipped it. The devil has taken from them, and therefore from us, the ability to determine what is real and what is fantasy; what can be believed and what cannot, and what is truth and what is not. Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t claim to have the answer to this mystery, but the only thing I can fathom is that someone is lying. The times or the sequence has been organized by somebody. It all leads me to one logical conclusion—McCready blew it. What to do now? Call in the best they’ve got—call in the guy who can get a statement from a stone wall. Call in the guy who has fifteen years on the job and has taken hundreds of confessions. Send him out with Jimmy Troiano for the sole and exclusive purpose of getting a statement from that young boy. I submit that there was absolutely nothing Jimmy Troiano was sure about or could relate with any certainty to the detective. Unfortunately for us, there is no tape recording or videotape of the interview which resulted in this statement. I humbly and respectfully submit that only God Almighty knows or will ever know what
happened that night, and I humbly and respectfully submit that if Jimmy Troiano or Albert Quinones deserve to be punished, it is the Almighty who must make that decision. In this case—like no other case I have ever seen—man alone will never do. We cannot—no matter our frustration, no matter what churns in our gut—do anything other than, by man’s law, acquit Jimmy Troiano. That is all we are capable of doing. I can say and do no more. I can only pray that you have the strength to do what is just. You can’t convict a man because of a gut feeling. To convict him would be no less heinous than the death of Gary Lauwers. May God guide your deliberations.”
After a brief lunch recess, the jury reentered the courtroom to hear Keahon’s final plea for a conviction.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Keahon said, “please remember this—before the police ever talked to James Troiano, he was able to tell all of this to Jean Wells. Where’s the loss of memory? Where’s the confusion? There was nothing mysterious or surreptitious about the methods used by the police to obtain the defendant’s statements. They did an expert job. Troiano was merely trying to con his way out of this. He lied in his first statement, hoping to hoodwink the police into letting him go free. Why else would he have been planning to flee with Kasso to California? Of course, Kasso was guilty, but Jimmy knew he was just as guilty. That was a pretty sick night. That was a bizarre night. That was a brutal night—a sadistic night. But details show it was real—not a fantasy. The inconsistencies are the things that make it real. When you think of the outrageousness of this night, think of Gary Lauwers screaming for his life. The defendant didn’t care. He said if you take Ricky’s drugs, then it’s okay if you kill him. Can you imagine what that boy was feeling? The defendant over there showed absolutely no remorse. I ask that you return a verdict of guilty for the second-degree murder of Gary Lauwers. Thank you.”
The Acid King Page 30