Since additional witnesses were still waiting to be heard following the lieutenant's testimony, court was adjourned at 3:30 P.M. until 10:00 A.M., Monday, January 15, 1951. The eightwomen, six-man jury was sequestered for the weekend at the Pitman Hotel. Hannold told the press that he expected to finish presenting the state's case on Monday. He planned to recall members of the New Jersey State Police for further explanation of what happened at the Malaga barracks after Ernie was arrested. Judge Wick noted that, to the best of his knowledge, it was the first time in the history of Gloucester County that a jury had to be sequestered for an entire weekend.
After a few more state troopers returned to testify on Monday to relate what they remembered of the events that occurred on November 17, 1950, another conflict arose between the prosecutor and the defense attorney. Sahl contended, when Detective Piana was recalled to the stand, that Ernie's right to counsel had been violated during his interrogation, but Hannold countered, "Our courts hold he had no rights at that time so far as counsel being concerned. He was being questioned." In response, the defense attorney then surprised everyone with a motion for a mistrial based on the outbursts of Tessie Ingenito and Armando Pioppi that had occurred the preceding Thursday. Sahl described their behavior as "prejudicial and inflammatory" and said they "must have left some imprint on the jury." Sahl pointed out that Armando's remarks in Italian were understood by at least one juror who spoke that language. Hannold termed the motion "untimely," and said it should have been addressed when the incidents occurred. Sahl countered that under the rules of the court, the defense did not have to take advantage of the incidents at the time they happened. Sahl's motion was denied by Judge Wick, who said he had observed nothing unusual after the scenes on Thursday and that similar outbursts had occurred in other trials with no noticeable effect.
Sahl was determined to be heard. If he couldn't get a mistrial, he would pursue other avenues of possible escape for his client. The attorney cited a number of different cases in which, he claimed, confessions had been elicited after long hours of questioning and those confessions were later declared inadmissible by the United States Supreme Court. He told the court, "This boy is not a man of superior intellect or mentality. I respectfully submit that the testimony, that the confession or verbal admissions, oral confessions, should be stricken and should not be admissible, and the testimony should be stricken from the record."
Hannold argued, "There is not one bit of evidence that there were any threats, there was any violence or that it was obtained under any duress or implied promises, and therefore having met the test as laid down by the court to be voluntary, I respectfully submit to the court this oral confession was voluntary, and therefore entitled to be admitted into evidence." When they finished, Judge Wick said that he had anticipated the argument and, having extensively researched the issue, did not agree with the defense. Sahl's motion was denied.
The next witness was Landisville resident Edward Maranelli. He had left his bed at Hahnemann Hospital to appear in court that day as a witness for the prosecution. Like Henry Coia Sr., he had been hospitalized because his nerves apparently were severely strained at the thought of testifying. When Maranelli took the stand, he said that Ernie had been a longtime customer at the hardware store he had operated in town since 1941. Maranelli said he had sold the defendant a box of shells in mid-October, when Ernie came in to purchase some supplies for work. In the weeks that followed, Ernie returned to the store at least four more times. In addition to buying material for his employer, he bought .32- and .38caliber rounds for his guns. According to the witness, Ernie brought one of his guns in to see if the.38-caliber shells would fit. In addition, Maranelli said he also sold Ernie .38-millimeter and nine-millimeter shells. When the accused asked if he could buy 30-30 carbine shells, Maranelli said he explained that they were not available to civilians.
The last witness for the prosecution was Cumberland County prosecutor George H. Stanger, who testified that Ernie had admitted to him, "I shot the works." According to Stanger, the defendant said he had previously stolen the carbine rifle and ammunition while he was stationed at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and sent them home. While Ernie had told Stanger that he had the Luger a "long time," he refused to name the person who had sold it to him. Ernie admitted that he had acquired the Mauser in a trade, but said he bought the revolver-the same gun that he later claimed he had removed from the basement of D'Augustine's store.
According to his attorney, Ernie would be the first to testify when the defense presented its case on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. Sahl planned to have at least seven other witnesses testify on Ernie's behalf. They included the three psychiatrists who had examined him in December and Samuel Leopold of Philadelphia, one of the judges who had sentenced Ernie to reform school as a youth. The defense attorney said the psychiatrists and the magistrate were expected to point out the mental deficiencies of the defendant. In addition, they would describe the conditions that had created a temperament that leaned toward physical violence as a means of overcoming an inability to cope intellectually with society. Sahl also hoped to persuade the jury that Ernie had a long-standing interest in firearms, which is why he had so many guns in his possession.
There was one subject that was never addressed directly during the trial by any of the lawyers or the judge, one that provided the defense attorney with an advantage that the prosecution didn't have-social standards. At that time, most women were stereotyped as submissive helpmates whose sole goal was the welfare of their husbands and children. The idea that they had run farms, worked in factories, and even flown planes during the war years was conveniently forgotten in favor of a more supportive role. Sahl used this image to paint a dark picture of Pearl Mazzoli as a disagreeable woman who did not behave according to accepted standards. She not only dominated the lives of her daughter and son-in-law, but her husband as well. Ernie told his attorney that Pearl had often stayed in bed until eleven o'clock in the morning, after giving orders to her husband and daughter. Those who knew her could believe that Pearl was sometimes domineering, but they laughed at the idea of her lying in bed each day while others took care of the work. Sahl planned to try and produce witnesses with firsthand knowledge of how Pearl interfered in Tessie's marriage. It was Pearl's behavior, and Tessie's refusal to let him see his sons, that caused Ernie to "black out" on the night of November 17, the lawyer said.
Ernie took the stand for the first time on Tuesday, January 16, 1951. It was the ninth day of a trial that had been expected to last less than a week. He spoke so softly that his attorney had to repeatedly ask him to raise his voice to make sure the jury heard all of his testimony. After providing his name and age, the defendant answered a number of questions about his family and his early life in Wildwood. Ernie told the court that he had lived in Wildwood for about eight years before the family moved to Philadelphia. During that time, he attended St. Anne's Catholic School. He went to parochial school when the Ingenitos first settled in the city, but probably transferred to public school shortly afterward because the family could no longer afford the tuition.
Ernie testified that after his family moved to Philadelphia, he remembered climbing a tree with some friends. He recalled, "A few of us were playing in a tree, was swinging back and forth, and a branch broke, and I fell out. I was knocked out. When I woke up, I was in a hospital." Ernie remembered being hospitalized for several days before returning to school, but said that things seemed different afterward. Although he "made out pretty good" with arithmetic, "I couldn't read too well and I couldn't spell too well." When Sahl asked how the teacher responded, Ernie said: "Sometimes sit me in the corner on a stool. I didn't like it, and when it come time after lunch to go back to school I wouldn't go."
"Is that what they call the dunce's corner?" his attorney asked.
"Yes," Ernie answered.
The defendant said he would also "run out" when some of his schoolmates made fun of him because he couldn't read very well. When he was
about fourteen, Ernie was eventually reassigned to the "OB Class," with other students who had similar learning disabilities. The change didn't sit well with him; too proud to tell his parents that he had been transferred, Ernie started playing hooky more and more from school.
"Now in the home, who took care of the children, or who tried to punish the children if they did anything wrong?" Sahl asked.
"My father," Ernie said.
His mother would intercede sometimes and tell his father not to hit the boy "so much," because he might hurt him, the defendant said. When Ernest Sr. failed to instill any respect for school in his son, Ernie's education was continued before long at the Shallcross School for delinquent boys in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. His parents would visit occasionally, but by that time, their rocky marriage was on the point of disintegration. Ernie testified that he continued to go in and out of Shallcross and other institutions in the years that followed. During one of his last stays at Shallcross, the defendant noted he enjoyed the vocational part of the training offered there, but still had trouble in the classroom. He "made out all right" while helping on the school's farm and didn't mind cooking or building furniture in the carpenter's shop. Sahl then questioned his client extensively about the type of instruction Ernie received in the carpentry shop and the tools used there.
After his release, the sixteen-year-old returned to his parents' home in Philadelphia. He had gone up to sixth grade in school, and as far as he was concerned, that was all the education he needed. Instead, he said, "I went to work in a shoe store, down to the corner from where we lived. He was teach ing me to repair shoes. I worked there for a few months, to be exact I couldn't say." According to Ernie, he earned about three dollars a week at the shoe store. The daily grind of a steady job and living at home with his family, however, apparently began to grate on his nerves. That was when he and "a few other fellows" burglarized a nearby store, stealing candy and cigarettes. Ernie was sent to Huntingdon for his part in the crime. Sahl once again advised his client to speak louder when his voice began to fade.
At the Industrial School in Huntingdon, Ernie worked in the furniture factory, making different kinds of chests and armoires "for the offices in Harrisburg," probably referring to the state government offices located there. Later, when he was transferred to another correctional institution at White Hill, the defendant said he was assigned to work in the bakery. According to Ernie, he did not attend school at either Huntingdon or White Hill, although the opportunity was available to him. Upon his release, Ernie said he went to live with his father in Philadelphia. His parents had finally separated and his mother had taken the other two children and returned to Wildwood. The defendant said he got a job in Stevenson's Bakery at 35th Street and Haverford Avenue, working as a bench hand, assisting the head baker, and "making all cinnamon buns and sweet dough." He worked the night shift at Stevenson's for about five weeks, earning approximately sixteen dollars for a six-day work week, which started at one o'clock in the morning until ten or eleven o'clock later that same day. Since Ernest Sr. was working the day shift in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, the two were rarely at home at the same time, keeping the peace between them.
All the same, Ernie apparently chafed at the idea of living with a parent again. After a while, he decided he was ready to be on his own, so he rented a room above the bakery. Since he was on parole at the time, however, his father visited him one day and warned him to return home. If he didn't, he could wind up back in the reformatory, Ernest Sr. said. The younger Ingenito decided he would rather leave Philadelphia entirely than return to live with his father. He petitioned the parole board to be allowed to move to his mother's house in Wildwood, where Helen supported her family by renting rooms to tourists in the summer. During cross-examination, Ernie told the court that a few days after he arrived at his mother's house, he got a job in Manning's Ice House in Wildwood to help support the family. He was employed there for about a month, stacking ice, before he started working as a laborer at the Wildwood Naval Air Station.
Ernie recalled earning about fifty dollars a week at the rate of seventy-five cents an hour at the air station. Some weeks he earned more if the sun was shining and he and the rest of the crew were able to spend more time outside completing their work. Sometimes, he said, they would work Sundays and nights in order to finish their assignments on time. He told the court that was when he first met Doris Breslin, who lived on East Baker Street in Wildwood with her parents. She was sixteen, he was seventeen; three months later, they eloped. Without a word to either family, the two teens slipped off to Elkton, Maryland. Then Ernie recalled, "Right after I was married, I lived home with my mother, and my wife lived home with her people. Her brother came over and he wanted to have it annulled and he said he had seen it in the paper and he wanted the marriage annulled. I told him I wouldn't have it annulled." Three days later, Doris left her parents' house and moved in with her new husband and his family.
The newlyweds stayed there about a month, Ernie testified, before moving in with the Breslins. By that time, Ernie said, he was working as a "grease monkey on a crane" at the naval base, earning $1.25 an hour. The defendant testified that he gave his mother-in-law twenty dollars each week and also provided Doris with an allowance. This may have been the time when Ernie first realized the power of money, which played a role in his later conflict over the family finances with Pearl Mazzoli.
Ernie's recollection of his first marriage was followed by an account of his brief service in the military. When it was time for cross-examination, though, the prosecutor didn't linger on the defendant's past. Instead, he focused Ernie's attention on the night of November 17, 1950. Admitting that he brought about two hundred rounds of ammunition for the carbine with him, Ernie recalled leaving that weapon in the car after he arrived at the Mazzoli home on Piney Hollow Road. He testified that he pulled a gun out of his pocket after he got inside.
"After you heard the shot, and heard the scream, and smelled the smoke, what was the next thing you remember?" Hannold asked.
"I heard on the radio that there were five people were killed and four people were wounded, and they were looking for me," Ernie said.
"You don't remember anything in between those two times?" the prosecutor asked.
"No."
After he heard the announcement on the radio, Ernie said he turned it off "and headed for the Malaga barracks." Here was another question that apparently was never raised: If the defendant truly didn't remember what he had done, what prompted him to pull out a razor blade and make a halfhearted attempt to cut his wrist? Although another argument broke out between Sahl and Hannold over questions about the radio announcement, the judge silenced them when he noted the matter had been addressed. When it was time to question his client again, Sahl turned Ernie's attention to the loan Pearl had made to him to buy a car. The defense attorney apparently was attempting to show once again how frustrated Ernie was by Pearl's alleged "control" of household finances.
Jumping from topic to topic, Sahl also tried to disprove the belief that his client liked to drink and fool around with other women. After his separation, Ernie testified that he had driven to Wildwood one day to visit an aunt. When she wasn't home, he decided to stop and spend some time with his ex-wife's family. While he was there, Ernie offered his two former sisters-inlaw, Ethel and Clarabelle, a ride home to Philadelphia because they apparently had missed the last bus that day.
"The prosecutor has asked you whether you were ever out with girls to a taproom known as the B&M at Buena," Sahl asked. "Were you?"
"No, sir," Ernie said, adding that he had only been in the B&M "three or four times" and had only gotten drunk once in his life.
"Did you make a practice of going out and drinking extensively?" Sahl asked.
"No, sir," his client answered.
As Ernie's testimony continued, the prosecutor and defense attorney continued to clash over the relevance of some of the questions. Hannold questioned the defendant about spendi
ng time with some girls at Vineland's new bowling alley on Delsea Drive and his knowledge of a local "lover's lane." Ernie continued to protest his innocence as the lawyers continued to spar over his testimony. Finally, Sahl turned his attention toward the day in October when Ernie decided to move out.
"Now, Ernest, I want you to listen to this question," Sahl said. "Were you kicked out of the Mazzoli home or did you personally leave the Mazzoli home?"
"I left the Mazzoli home on Sunday morning."
"Were you asked to leave?" Sahl inquired.
"I left wishing my wife to go with me," Ernie said, sidestepping the question. "I wanted my wife to come with me."
The defendant then described his efforts to obtain legal assistance and effect reconciliation with Tessie. As time passed, he grew more frustrated. Although the Coias had previously testified that Ernie had seemed in good spirits when he showed up at their house earlier on Friday, November 17, 1950, the defendant said he was "so upset" by that point, he returned to the Rulis home where he got his guns and put them in the car.
"I decided then to go see my in-laws and scare them into letting me see the kids," Ernie told the court. "My mother-inlaw has always been impossible."
In the next breath, he testified that he didn't recall carrying the revolver into the Mazzoli house when he arrived there that night, probably not realizing that he had just contradicted himself. When asked what he did recall after he went inside, Ernie said in a low voice, "Mike was shoving me toward the door. Tessie came toward me. What happened after that, I don't remember." Ernie spoke very quietly on the stand and was once again asked several times to speak up when his remarks were inaudible to the jury. Although he said he didn't remember the guns going off, he did recall following Pearl to her parents' house across the street. After shooting Theresa and Marion, he trailed Pearl into the Pioppis' dining room, but never actually admitted shooting her. He testified, "I then went in their house and found my mother-in-law holding Jino's kid in front of her. I guess that is when I shot the kid while trying to shoot my mother-in-law. I wasn't in the house longer than five minutes and left."
Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre Page 12