by Scott Selby
The men and their wives went before a judge again on Friday, March 28, 2003, and Falleti hoped he and Zwiep would go free on bail pending their trials. All recent evidence pointed toward their innocence: tests showed that the gloves and tape found at their house did not match those used in the heist, DNA tests showed no connection between the couple and any items found in the vault or in the Floordambos, and SIM card analysis showed that none of Falleti’s known telephone numbers was among those used on the closed phone network. The couple’s wish was granted, and after they’d spent five weeks in jail, the court granted Falleti and Zwiep bail. Falleti had to pay 2,500 and agree to return to Antwerp upon request or risk arrest. Zwiep was released on her own recognizance. Her children were waiting for her in the Netherlands; a relative had retrieved them after they’d spent three days at Paola Kinderziekenhuis.
In early May, Crudo was released pending her trial. She had been in jail for more than two months.
Falleti might have been out of jail, but he was far from resuming the life he’d left behind in February. As he fought to get his job back and worried about the effects of his imprisonment on his children, his relationship with his wife started to crumble under the perpetual fear they might lose their cases and end up serving five years in prison.
The police searched Falleti’s sister’s home in the Belgian capital of Brussels (cell phone records indicated at least one of the thieves had gone to that city), telling her that, if she refused to answer their questions, she would be arrested. On August 19, 2003, the diamond detectives contacted Falleti and demanded that he return to Antwerp to answer additional questions. He had no choice but to comply; if he refused, it would be a breach of his bail agreement and a new warrant would be issued for his arrest.
During this new round of interrogation, the police peppered Falleti with detailed questions about his phone calls with Notarbartolo. They found it suspicious that Notarbartolo was the only person Falleti had called on that prepaid phone even though he knew other people abroad, such as his sister. The explanation that Notarbartolo was the only person he regularly called abroad did not placate them.
Detectives also found it suspicious that Falleti had called Notarbartolo from both his prepaid and normal phones. Though this contradicted his prior statement that he only called Notarbartolo on the prepaid, it should have helped clear him. It was significant that Falleti called the same number from both phones; it showed he wasn’t trying to hide his contacts with Notarbartolo in the way someone who had dialed to and from only the secret numbers would have. But instead of seeing it this way, the police interpreted this as Falleti’s having lied to them before in an attempt to conceal the extent of his communication with Notarbartolo.
The diamond detectives also believed Falleti stored Notarbartolo’s phone numbers under P and Tarrun as an attempt to conceal his friend’s identity. Falleti’s nickname explanations, repeated numerous times in the past, were ignored. Italian cultural habits did not translate well in Belgium.
Despite his cooperation, Falleti’s bail was revoked and the police put him back in jail. Detectives felt that their case against him was strengthening and that, therefore, he might pose a flight risk. “This uncertainty is killing us,” Falleti said about this back-and-forth legal process. “We got into this adventure by pure coincidence.”
Back in jail, Falleti and Notarbartolo were soon reunited. They went back to their old routines and were even allowed to share a cell. Notarbartolo slept in the top bunk while Falleti had the bottom one. Falleti found his friend to be a fastidious cellmate, taking care to perfectly make his bed first thing in the morning. Together, they cooked Italian food using a hot plate in their cell and ingredients bought at the prison’s store. All they missed was wine to go with it.
While the defendants awaited their day in court, detectives in Belgium and Italy continued to scour Europe for more than just additional suspects and clues. They were also looking, so far in vain, for any trace of the estimated 100 million to 400 million worth of diamonds, jewelry, and gold.
With every passing day, the chance of finding a single stolen carat diminished further. They were looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Flawless
Chapter Twelve
THE TRIAL
“Any time you take a chance, you better be sure the rewards are worth the risk because they can put you away just as fast for a ten dollar heist as they can for a million dollar job.”
—The Killing (1956)
From the moment his name was tied to the biggest heist of all time, Leonardo Notarbartolo’s carefully cultivated anonymity disappeared just like the loot he pilfered from the Diamond Center. The School of Turin soon became infamous around the world, as much for the genius of their crime as for the manner in which they were caught.
The long months leading up to the trial were marked by international media interest that only intensified as the thieves’ day in court approached.
Turin’s daily newspaper, La Stampa, couldn’t seem to decide if Notarbartolo should be treated as a folk hero or a villain. One reporter christened Notarbartolo with the nickname “the Man of Gold,” while another called the decision to leave the garbage in the Floordambos the mark of “amateurs” and “beginners.” A third wrote a long feature about the School of Turin’s background that made them sound like Robin Hood’s Merry Men.
The tone of the coverage in Antwerp was markedly different. The press identified Notarbartolo and the other arrestees as belonging to the Mafia, describing Notarbartolo not only as a man involved with organized crime, but also as a gunrunner and a drug dealer, allegations that were never substantiated.
The heist had been both devastating and embarrassing for the Diamond District, and the press coverage reflected this. Not only had safe deposit box holders in a major building been victimized, but the city’s most important industry had been threatened. A secure environment in which to trade was at the heart of the Diamond District’s ability to keep traders.
Despite grave concerns about security, no one seriously questioned Antwerp’s ability to secure diamonds. “Nobody left Antwerp because of what happened,” Philip Claes of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre later claimed. “It had no effect at all on the figures in general, of the imports or the exports, or the place of Antwerp as being number one as a world diamond center. What was very important, of course, is that the police rather quickly identified the guys who did it, so that was a relief, a relief to everybody. Okay, maybe the security failed, but the police did a great job.”
Perhaps it was a desire by law enforcement to highlight the success of their investigation that led them to the unprecedented decision to cooperate with ABC News on a story for Primetime Live. Immediately after the robbery was discovered, the story was reported around the world and widely covered in major American newspapers, but only superficially. As a policy, Belgian police never openly cooperated with journalists—and they had certainly never gone on a program with millions of viewers to discuss a case while the trial was still pending. The confidentiality of an investigation, in deference to the defendants’ rights to privacy and to ensure the credibility of the case against them, was taken more seriously in Belgium than in many other countries.
Initially, unit commander Agim De Bruycker simply refused to speak to the ABC team. But the television show’s tenacious producer, Simon Surowicz, did not take no for an answer. He was so persistent that he was “kicked out of many buildings,” Surowicz later recalled, including the police department and the justice building. Authorities even threatened to kick him out of the country if he didn’t stop trying to dig up details about the heist. Surowicz, however, was undeterred. He kept reaching up the chain of command, repeating his requests for access to information about the case until it finally paid off. Much to the detectives’ surprise, they were directly ordered by their supervisors to cooperate with Surowicz and the show’s on-air reporter, Jay Schadler. Though the reason for this about-face in policy was n
ever explained, it was widely seen as a move to highlight the investigative skills employed by the Belgian government. Privately, the detectives knew they were lucky to have broken the case open so quickly; if it weren’t for Gust Van Camp, Notarbartolo and the others might never have been caught.
The American TV producer soon won over the detectives and gained their trust, particularly when they received a phone call from the security guards at the Diamond Center reporting that Surowicz had been caught in the building’s vault without permission. Surowicz had left ABC’s hidden camera equipment in the United States because he presumed the Diamond Center’s vault was as “impenetrable” as reported and he would have no use for it. But when he arrived in Belgium, he discovered that even after the heist of the century, the vault was far from impenetrable; it was accessible by anyone who pushed the correct button in the elevator.
Surowicz bought a small video camera and rigged a shoulder bag to conceal it, just as Notarbartolo had done. He entered the Diamond Center as the guest of one of the tenants and then, by himself, took the elevator to the bottom floor. Once there, he hung around in the foyer and filmed through the day gate at his leisure until finally—after several minutes had passed—a security guard arrived to question him. Surowicz was allowed to leave, but the incident was reported to the police.
The detectives were more amused than angry, Surowicz recalled, in part because he had single-handedly proven how slack the security continued to be less than a year after the biggest heist in history had occurred there. “I went to the place that was ‘impenetrable’ and at that time got the only footage that I know of,” he said.
The hour-long show aired almost exactly a year after the heist and compared the perpetrators to the fictional thieves in the film Ocean’s Eleven. It included Surowicz’s clandestine footage of the vault, computer reconstructions of many elements of the crime, and interviews with some of the victims. But the part of the show that had the most impact in Belgium was the interviews with Peys and De Bruckyer, in which the detectives openly discussed the evidence against their main suspect: Leonardo Notarbartolo. It was unprecedented in Belgium for police officers to speak so candidly about a case that was still under investigation. The only thing the show lacked was an outcome, as the wheels of justice were still barely spinning even as the diamond heist marked its first anniversary.
Just days after that one-year milestone, on February 19, 2004, after he’d been imprisoned for nearly six months, the court granted Falleti bail for a second time. At 25,000, it was ten times the amount of his prior bail. His first bail had been revoked when the police found additional evidence they believed strengthened their case against him. But since that evidence was not as strong as it had first appeared, the court allowed Falleti to leave jail again, albeit with a higher bail amount.
There was more good news for Falleti in mid-September 2004 when charges were dropped against his wife, Judith Zwiep. Her lawyer, Eric Boon, convinced the prosecutor that there was not enough evidence against her to continue the case. Now she could remain in Holland with no fear of ending up in jail. With Zwiep freed, Falleti could focus his energy on the charges he faced, knowing that even in a worst-case scenario, should he be found guilty, his children would have at least one parent to raise them while he served his time.
While Notarbartolo paced his cell in the Prison of Antwerp, the case against him moved slowly forward, plagued by delays. He was now the only one of the remaining defendants in jail. The trial—for all of the defendants at once—was to start on October 25, 2004, but hit another delay because the Belgians hadn’t properly summoned any defendants to court other than Notarbartolo. Falleti had received his court summons only the day before the court date, and some of the defendants who remained in Italy received no notice at all.
The court postponed the proceedings until late November. A week before the new trial date, the three-judge panel surprised many courtroom observers by agreeing to a motion by Walter Damen, Notarbartolo’s attorney, to set bail for his client in the amount of 50,000. In an accomplishment of biblical proportions, Damen successfully argued there was “absolutely no reason to hold Notarbartolo any longer. [There was] no more danger for collusion and, with imposing a guarantor, one eliminates the risk that he will flee from these proceedings.”
The collusion part made sense; the police had long ago finished their initial investigation. But Notarbartolo potentially faced eight more years in prison, and bail set at 50,000 was not nearly enough incentive to prevent him from fleeing. Notarbartolo kept that amount of money at home in cash and had just played a key role in successfully stealing well over a hundred million euros’ worth of loot. He was the very definition of a flight risk—he had no ties to the community and if he fled to his native Italy, he might have been beyond the reach of the Belgian authorities.
The prosecutor immediately appealed this decision and the court agreed not to grant Notarbartolo bail until the appeal was resolved. The appeal went against Notarbartolo and his bail request was ultimately denied.
Notarbartolo wasn’t the only member of the School of Turin the prosecutors needed to consider. In advance of the trial date, prosecutors were sure to get the proper paperwork into the hands of all the defendants—for instance, Falleti was served his summons in person after he got off a bus on his way home from work—but the summonses were written in Flemish.
The defendants’ lawyers argued that the summons should have been written in a language the defendants could understand. While the judges were not pleased with what would be yet another delay, they agreed that the summonses needed to be translated into Italian so the defendants could fully understand what these critical legal documents said. They did not want to risk a claim on appeal that the defendants were not properly served with notice of the charges against them. The prosecutors were ordered to serve the defendants again, this time with documents properly translated into Italian.
The prosecution, led by Ben Theunis, initially agreed to this seemingly reasonable request, but then, in yet another surprising maneuver, decided to appeal, arguing that there was nothing in Belgian law that required them to send out summonses in Italian. Of course, when the prosecutor’s office needed help from the Italian police, they had no problem translating long documents into Italian on those occasions.
The trial was put on hold for two months pending the outcome of the prosecutor’s appeal. This caused a significantly longer delay than if the prosecutor had simply translated the summonses. The calendar slowly wound its way toward the second anniversary of the heist.
While this seemingly farcical argument played out on the appellate level, Notarbartolo was reminded yet again that the Belgians’ stated commitment to speedy trials for accused criminals meant little in real life. He’d been behind bars for nearly as long as he’d rented his office at the Diamond Center; only a jail like the Prison of Antwerp could make him long for the dingy little apartment on Charlottalei.
Since the so-called Man of Gold had been arrested, much had happened on the outside. His son Marco’s wife had given birth to a baby girl whom Notarbartolo had seen only during his family’s infrequent visits to the prison. His close friend Mimmo Falleti—Antonino Falleti’s brother—had died of cancer.
Notarbartolo kept up with the news of his friends and family with an expensive telephone habit. Prisoners were allowed phone calls, but only if they paid exorbitant fees for them. Notarbartolo spent about 4,000 per year, a fortune considering that most prisoners were stone broke. He was never foolish enough to risk a call to Finotto, D’Onorio, or Tavano. So he could only imagine how they were spending their time, and their money, while he waited in the overcrowded prison for the trial to start.
On Thursday, January 13, 2005, the disagreement over which language to use in the summonses veered in a direction the defendants never expected: The appeals court upheld the lower court’s order that the summonses be translated into Italian, but also declared that the trial would be held at the appellate level
, not first at the Correctional Court level. Doing so meant that the appeals court would try the case directly, skipping the lower court level completely. In other words, the defendants had one less chance of appeal; it removed an entire layer of the process. There was nothing comparable in U.S. criminal law.
This move may have been unexpected, but it wasn’t accidental; Prosecutor Ben Theunis said that his office decided to appeal the translation issue with an eye toward convincing the appeals court to take the case away from the trial court. It was a cagey attempt to exploit this unique feature of Belgian jurisprudence to deny an avenue of appeal to the defendants. And it paid off.
“It’s a kind of strategic move,” Theunis said years later. “We had this judgment [regarding the order to translate the summonses into Italian] and we decided we will go into appeal ourselves. Of course, we thought about the fact that the Court of Appeal could keep the case.”
To ensure the court knew of its options, “there was a suggestion” from the prosecutors’ office to the judge that the case stay at the appellate level, Theunis said. The defendants’ lawyers argued against it, but in vain.
“Of course, from the prosecutors’ point of view this was a good thing because the accused, they lost an appeal,” Theunis admitted.
The Supreme Court in Belgium was now the only higher authority available to review the outcome of the case, and that court heard only appeals based on errors of law. The key issues at stake in this trial were not ones of law, but of fact: Were the defendants involved in the robbery and, in Notarbartolo’s case, was he the ringleader? The Antwerp Court of Appeal was highly regarded; it was unlikely the judges would commit any errors of law.