Confessions of a Second Story Man

by Allen M. Hornblum

  Kripplebauer feared that it was only a matter of time before he’d see his own name connected to the plot and Allegheny County authorities paying him a visit. Everything he had ever done, it seemed, was coming back to haunt him. He wondered if he would spend the rest of his life in courtrooms around the country fending off new criminal charges. It was worse than a nightmare; it was real. Junior’s life had become a never-ending legal struggle and an involuntary tour of America’s federal, state, and local prison systems.

  As he had feared, Kripplebauer received a memorandum from his Lewisburg case manager on October 9, 1981: the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office had requested “temporary custody” of him to face charges of “criminal conspiracy.”

  As usual, Junior threw himself into the legal thicket, researching the formal complaint, the Interstate Agreement on Detainers, writs of habeas corpus, motions to suppress and dismiss, and a half-dozen other complex substantive, procedural, and jurisdictional issues. A master of the nuances of the legal trade, Junior barraged the Lewisburg warden with a mass of paper, legal precedents, and well-researched arguments to block his transfer, but it was to no avail. Junior was shipped to Pittsburgh on November 10, 1981.

  Compounding his predicament was the fact that he would be forced to ask the court for legal assistance. He needed representation but lacked the funds to pay for an attorney. His prison scams brought in a few bucks, but nothing that approached what a first-rate, well-known lawyer would demand to handle such a case. No longer a high-roller who could afford the likes of Racehorse Haynes, Kripplebauer was destitute and had to throw himself on the mercy of the court and file in forma pauperis.o attain competent counsel.

  Michael J. Healey, a congenial Pittsburgh barrister in his early fifties, was appointed Kripplebauer’s attorney. Lawyer and client got along well, mostly because, as Junior likes to say, “he did everything I told him.”

  Housed in the Allegheny County Jail, Junior spent as much time as he could in the prison law library researching various aspects of the still-developing case. Henkel, hip deep in bodies, was cutting deals and divulging the whereabouts of various corpses (including Bruce Agnew’s) to avoid the death penalty. Small and Ford looked to be going down as well. Small had already lost his job on the police force, and that appeared to be the least of his problems. He was headed to prison, and so were a few others. Junior was still a bit player in the unfolding drama but had been named as a participant by at least one co-conspirator, Jack “the Jew” Siggson. (Interestingly, Siggson’s testimony revealed that Junior had been on Henkel’s hit list as well.)

  In an effort to block Siggson’s testimony, Kripplebauer provided his attorney with several well-researched strategies, including the argument that “convicted perjurers were incompetent to testify in trials in Pennsylvania.” Hence, “the Jew’s” testimony was highly tainted and should be thrown out. Junior also investigated other aspects of the case: prosecutorial misconduct, statute of limitation questions, and specific failures of the Investigating Grand Jury that had started the probe.

  Weeks and months passed without his being brought to trial, and Kripple-bauer gradually began to focus on a procedural issue that had the potential of being a legal thunderbolt—a veritable strike from the heavens that could win his freedom. He began to concentrate his energies on this rarely applied point of law.

  Junior had first become aware of the critical importance of “speedy trial” issues as he watched the North Carolina prosecutions unfold. The point had implanted itself in his brain when Teddy Wigerman beat one of his cases because the local authorities waited too long to bring him to trial. It had caused a minor political uproar in Guilford County when a “Hallmark kingpin” had to be let off the hook and sent back to federal prison without ever facing the many individuals he had victimized. (Ultimately this embarrassing prosecutorial oversight got the Guilford County district attorney kicked out of office.) Kripplebauer, an accomplished jailhouse lawyer, was impressed.

  As the days ticked away with no scheduled trial date, Junior was encouraged to ponder the chance of the same scenario happening in Pennsylvania. Could he beat the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office through a procedural technicality the same way Wigerman had beat them in North Carolina? Just in case, though, Junior started to line up potential witnesses as he had done earlier in Greensboro. The bluff worked once, he thought to himself; why not again?

  Meanwhile, Junior spent days examining pertinent features of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers. He quickly recognized the document as “a powerful tool in the hands of a knowledgeable defendant,” one that enabled prisoners to “get detainers off their backs.” Specifically, according to Kripplebauer, “articles 3 and 4 of the Interstate Agreement made it mandatory that a detainee be tried within 120 days.” If the prosecutor’s office didn’t move within that time frame, the defendant had to be set free.

  “I thought I had them,” recalls Kripplebauer, “but you can’t ever be sure. Going into any courtroom was always somewhat of a crapshoot. I can tell you, though, it was the longest 120 days of my life. I watched those 120 days click by and feared they’d come for me one day and that would be it. They caught their mistake and I was in the soup. But they never did. They let those 120 days run out. Like I always say, the government can really fuck things up.”

  Kripplebauer still remembers the reaction of his attorney when he first let him in on his little jailhouse research project. “Healey came to see me at the prison one day to go over a few things,” says Junior, “when I asked him to take a minute and look at a ‘motion to quash’ petition I had put together. He said he didn’t have time; he’d read it later. He said we had a few more important things to discuss regarding the impending trial. I told him, ‘We ain’t gonna have a trial. I got Kim Riester [the Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney] by the nuts. Read the petition.’

  “Healey’s reading and reading, and you can start to see his eyes grow more focused and an intense expression come over his face. Then he looks up at me with this wide-eyed grin and says, ‘I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch. I think you got ’em. You got ’em by the balls.’”

  A similar scene was played out a short time later, this time in an Allegheny County courtroom in front of a Common Pleas Court judge. As soon as Judge Ralph Cappy gaveled the courtroom to order, attorney Healey stood up and said, “Your Honor, my client would like to file a petition before the court.”

  Judge Cappy agreed to examine the document and began to read the six-page petition. He showed only modest interest until he reached page four, at which point he raised his eyes from the document, looked carefully at the defendant, and then glanced at the prosecutor.

  The judge’s reaction was just what Junior had hoped for. “I totally blindsided them,” says Junior. “They had no idea this was coming.”

  Judge Cappy could do only one thing—Junior had quoted what the Interstate Agreement on Detainers prescribed in such situations: “the judge having jurisdiction must dismiss with prejudice.”

  Kripplebauer had beaten them again. Of course, the Allegheny County DA appealed the decision, which kept Junior on ice in Pittsburgh for many more months, but the Sword of Damocles was no longer hanging above his head. His research was flawless and his arguments factually sound: the law was behind him. Others in the Rooney conspiracy took a fall and did time, but Kripplebauer had extricated himself from a bad one. He wasn’t a free man—he was going back to Lewisburg to finish his federal sentence and faced a lengthy term in North Carolina after that. But for the moment there was reason to celebrate. There was one less prison sentence to do.

  AFTER YEARS IN THE LEGAL wilderness fighting off the best prosecutors Greensboro, Houston, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh—not to mention the federal government—had to throw at him, Junior thought the end was in sight. He had dragged out his Lewisburg stay as long as he could in order to avoid spending any more time than he had to in shitty Tar Heel prisons, but once that ordeal was completed he’d be ou
t, a free man again. As distant as that prospect once seemed when he was the target of varied, multistate criminal indictments, he realized that North Carolina could be his last stop (if no one else dropped a detainer on him, of course) and that attaining parole was the quickest way to advance his release. It wouldn’t be easy, considering that authorities throughout the state believed he had gotten away with a far lighter sentence than he deserved. He approached this critical window of opportunity in typical Kripplebauer fashion—methodically, but with relentless determination and sparkling originality.

  The Philly burglar first set up shop in the prison law library, developing a plan and researching everything he could get his hands on that dealt with the state’s parole laws and good-time statutes. He was pleased to discover that whereas criminal sanctions there could be nothing short of draconian, the state also provided for a liberal amount of earned time credit. In other words, good behavior and accomplishments such as educational credits could be translated into a certain number of days off one’s sentence per month. Junior wasn’t going to miss out on a single opportunity. In fact, he even created a few credit-earning vehicles of his own.

  As he settled in for what looked like a long haul in North Carolina, Junior was fortunate to have the support of many friends, both old and new. One of the latter was Cheryl McConnell, Junior’s new flame, who had obtained a divorce from her husband and continued to nurture her evolving relationship with the magnetic and accomplished Philly burglar. She wrote, phoned, and visited Junior often. Sometimes she was flown in by John Stayton, one of Junior’s friends from Philadelphia, who was now piloting his own aircraft. Stayton, also known as Gallagher on the streets of his hometown, had cultivated one of the larger shoplifting operations in the Delaware Valley until the lure of even bigger money in the drug trade caused him to switch fields. Like many others in the seventies, he did well in the meth business and was rolling in money.

  Some of the cash was used to pay off guards at the various North Carolina institutions where Kripplebauer was imprisoned. A little private time with the attractive brunette or some extra phone time was worth a couple hundred dollars. Money always talked and Stayton’s largess allowed Junior to do a lot of talking (as well as a few other things).

  Stayton always offered Junior money during his visits. Appreciative but not greedy, Junior sometimes declined the friendly gesture. On one such occasion, Stayton surreptitiously passed a fistful of cash to a Reidsville Road Camp inmate to give to Kripplebauer at a later time. Stayton made a couple of mistakes during the transaction, however. He pulled the cash from the wrong pocket, thereby giving considerably more than he intended, and he compounded the mistake by giving it to the wrong inmate. The prisoner, a well-known snitch in the camp, was staggered to count out $2,800, which he dutifully passed on to Kripplebauer. Unfortunately, he also told one of the road camp captains about the transaction.

  Soon after, a captain confronted Kripplebauer in the exercise yard. “Okay, Kripplebauer,” he barked, “strip down.”

  “Whaddya talking about?” asked Junior, who was running laps on the track.

  “You heard me, Kripplebauer. Strip. I want everything off.”

  “Like hell I will,” said Junior, who had no intention of getting jaybird naked while dozens of men were exercising in the yard.

  “Kripplebauer, I’m ordering you to strip down,” said the increasingly agitated officer. “Are you going to disobey a direct order?”

  Junior knew as well as anyone how unusual such a command was. In some prisons such a public affront to a prisoner’s manhood was unthinkable; it could get a guard killed. He knew that the captain had grown frustrated trying to locate the money from Stayton. The captain had already rifled Kribblebauer’s bunk, locker, baggage, workplace, and anywhere else he could think of. He was desperate to get ahold of the money and now looking to see if it was secreted on Junior’s body.

  Reluctantly, Kripplebauer shed his jogging shorts, T-shirt, underwear, socks, and track shoes. “You know this ain’t right, man,” he said. “This is some serious shit you’re causing here.” The captain then performed a body cavity search right there in the prison yard, for all to see. It was humiliating experience for Kripplebauer, but once again, the captain failed to find the money.

  Blood had been spilt over less serious personal insults in the yard, and Kripplebauer wasn’t timid about repaying debts, but this time he chose to be diplomatic. He had gotten over on the officer, he still had the money, and, more important, he wanted to get the hell out of North Carolina. He was building up parole credits, getting visits from Cheryl, and didn’t want anything to derail his game plan.

  Oblivious to his near-death experience, the captain kept a close eye on Kripplebauer. Junior had initially hid the knot of money below ground on the Reidsville complex but then removed it and distributed the cash among trusted members of the prison population. The institution had a rule that an inmate could have up to $25 in his possession. Junior doled out the money and gave each man a dollar a week for his services. Officers thought it unusual that some perennially broke prisoners were now loaded with cash, but they never got a handle on the source of their sudden windfall.

  Despite the many years Junior still owed North Carolina and Cheryl’s desire to find a romantic partner who wasn’t in jail, their attraction to each other was strong and genuine. They were not blind to the insanity of it all; they just chose to downplay the hurdles and improbabilities. They were in love.

  Junior felt fresh and alive knowing that a beautiful woman like Cheryl was in love with him; he was as happy as he could be, considering he had been behind bars for eight years and was facing that much and more in the future if the authorities got their way. He still kept in touch with Mickie, but they were no longer husband and wife. She was trying to get her life back together and raise her son in Cherry Hill. The adjustment had not been easy. Even though she was a woman, and even though she was eligible for parole, the North Carolina authorities were in no mood to hand a “get out of jail” pass to a member of the Hallmark Gang. Mickie had suffered in prison, and it had taken a toll on her health.

  With marriage on his mind, Junior had to get his divorce papers, and Mickie was the one who had them. It wasn’t a phone call he delighted in making, but it had to be done. He needed the paperwork if he was to marry Cheryl. When Mickie asked why he needed the documents, Junior told her he had met someone and wanted to marry her. Mickie was momentarily silent and then began to cry. Though they had been divorced for several years and each had become involved with someone else, there was still a bond between them. Mickie was shaken by the news.

  Junior tried to explain. Tough cookie that she was, Mickie quickly regained her composure, wiped away the tears, and joked, “She’s not one of the bulldykes from Central Prison, is she?”

  Once he assured her that he hadn’t developed an interest in any pushy, tough-talking North Carolina lesbians, Junior began to talk about Cheryl—how they had met, their growing fondness for each other, and her strong support, despite his lengthy incarceration and constant transfers between institutions.

  Mickie listened and understood, maybe better than anyone else in the world could. She had gone through a similar experience with the handsome, self-assured Philly burglar. In fact, just over 10 years ago she had fallen for him and come East without even having met him. Their mutual attraction blossomed through correspondence and a couple of worn photographs. Mickie understood why women were attracted to Junior, and also why a person locked in a concrete box for years needed somebody on the outside.

  Junior could tell that something other than his planned marriage was bothering her. “Mickie, what’s wrong?” he asked. “Something else is going on, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not good,” said Mickie. “I guess all that shit is catching up with me.”

  “Whaddya talkin’ about?” asked Junior.

  “Remember I told you about those lumps I had? It’s breast cancer.”

  Taken aba
ck, Junior waited before replying. He didn’t like where the conversation was headed. He wanted to ask how serious it was, but could only come out with, “Was it from the implants?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” said Mickie. “I knew I had a problem down in North Carolina. I could feel the lumps and told the prison authorities I had a problem and needed to see a doctor at a hospital, but they just passed it off. They should’ve checked me out and taken care of it down there.”

  “What are you gonna do?” asked Junior.

  “The doctor’s talking about taking my breasts off,” said Mickie.

  “It’s that bad?” said Junior, for the first time realizing the seriousness of the situation.

  “Yeah,” said Mickie, “it’s pretty bad.”

  Mickie’s condition frightened him. He felt helpless. It was hard to picture his old partner—spirited, cute, full of energy, the physical equal of most men he had ever worked with—in such bad shape. He told a couple of captains and sergeants about his former wife’s condition, and they allowed him some additional phone time to check on things periodically. The conversations grew shorter and more ominous.

  Calling for an update one day, Junior heard the terrible news. Mickie’s breasts had been removed; she had had a radical mastectomy. “The doctor said if he didn’t take them off, the cancer would spread,” Mickie told him. Junior felt instantaneously drained, as if a large vacuum had just sucked the life force out of him.