The French Connection
Page 29
At one point, Lowenberg feigned a nervous breakdown in hopes that Judge Liebowitz might be con-strained to declare a mistrial because one of the defence counsel was unfit to represent his client. But Liebowitz, who knew that Lowenberg had used this same tactic once before in a Bronx court, refused to recognize the ruse and in fact privately advised the attorney that if he persisted in his attempted deception it would be cause for an inquiry by the Bar Association. The trial went on.
On the morning of the sixth day, Wednesday, May 22, Jacques Angelvin and his counsel, Kasanof, met with Judge Liebowitz and prosecutor Bauman in the judge's robing room. Angelvin wanted to change his plea to guilty.
For almost the entire morning, Liebowitz questioned Angelvin in his chambers, trying to elicit information that might help identify the highest crime lords in the narcotics syndicate and to place Scaglia's role in the heroin ring. Angelvin was plainly terrified. The TV performer indicated that he would be murdered if he talked about Scaglia or others connected with the heroin smuggling to which he had pleaded guilty.
Finally, the judge accepted Angelvin's new plea of guilty with its implication of a lighter sentence and set sentencing for September 13.
Back in court, Liebowitz meticulously charged the jury not to allow the fact that the defendant Angelvin was absent to indicate to them in the slightest degree that Scaglia was guilty or innocent. He made each juror, one by one, repeat the statement: "The absence of the defendant Angelvin has no bearing on the case against Mr. Scaglia."
Lowenberg nonetheless made another motion for mistrial on grounds that the severance of the trial of Angelvin from Scaglia was prejudicial. The motion was denied.
The next afternoon, Bauman rested the case for the people. The prosecution had firmly established the skein of conspiracy in which Scaglia was linked with Patsy Fuca, and it had exhibited technical proof that Angelvin's automobile had transported the heroin found in the Fuca basement. The defence had nowhere to go. Lowenberg's plea essentially was for clemency. The trial was recessed until Tuesday, May 28.
That day, Judge Liebowitz charged the jurors, then they were sent out to deliberate.
Within eighty minutes the jury returned its verdict on François Scaglia: Guilty as charged to each of the three counts in the indictment.
The district attorney's office immediately asked that Scaglia be remanded to jail without bail. Judge Liebowitz agreed. "A scoundrel of this kind who brings such a load of misery into this country doesn't deserve any consideration. Our country is being flooded by these rats who bring in this insidious drug so that poor unfortunates may be kept on narcotics. This is not some little, petty larceny pusher or addict who is selling a little dope so he can get some for himself. This is a big-time operator. And he can rest assured that he will feel the heavy fist of the law; it will descend upon him in no uncertain terms when he is sentenced."
Sentencing was set for September 13.
Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso walked out of the courtroom and into the sunshine, still warm that late spring afternoon. Sonny had just been promoted to first grade detective; the baseball season was underway again — all seemed well with the world.
"What do we do now?" Sonny asked.
"Maybe we ought to celebrate, go popeying around somewhere. What say we go over to the Copa tonight? There's a new hatcheck kid there.
Sonny stopped halfway down the courthouse steps and stared incredulously at his partner. "The Copa? Are you kidding?"
E p i l o g u e
On September 13, 1963, Judge Liebowitz passed sentence on Jacques Angelvin and François Scaglia. Both Kasanof and Lowenberg argued for light sentences.
Kasanof reminded the court of Angelvin's two teenage children and his two elderly parents, who had written to the judge: "We have only this one son. Our life is coming to an end, and we would like to have time to help him remake his life."
He also cited letters received on Angelvin's behalf from such luminaries as Maurice Chevalier, Yves Montand and Simone Signoret.
Lowenberg also asked for clemency, saying that Scaglia had worked in the French underground against the Nazis during World War II. He said that Scaglia "is contrite and — "
The judge interrupted: "Oh, he is far from being contrite. He refused to talk to the probation officer, and he has said he would take his chances on appeal."
Judge Liebowitz sentenced Angelvin to three to six years in Sing Sing and then turned to Scaglia:
"You are one of the most contemptible creatures that ever stood before this criminal bar of justice. You deserve no mercy — none; and let the word go back to France and to the other merchants of death, for that is what you are, that if they are caught in this country they too must suffer the full penalty of the law."
With that, Judge Liebowitz sentenced the Corsican, Scaglia, to Sing Sing, thence to be removed to the Attica State Prison for consecutive terms of seven-and-a-half to fifteen and three-and-a-half to seven years — a maximum twenty-two years all told. It was the harshest penalty levied upon any of the principals in the case.
Three months later, in January 1964, Patsy Fuca finally came up for sentencing. Like his brother Tony, convicted in the Bronx, Patsy drew seven-and-a-half to fifteen years. As for old Joe Fuca, Patsy's father's three-year sentence in the end was suspended, and he was sent home to his bottle and his bitterness.
In May of 1967, the mysterious Jean Jehan finally was apprehended in Paris by the Sûreté. Because of his advanced age, the French police declined requests by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics for extradition, and as this is written the sinister old boulevardier remains relatively safe in France, presumably under the watchful eye of the National Police.
Probably, Jehan is the only one who could tell what happened to the payoff money — perhaps as much as $500,000 — which never was recovered. He may also be the only one who knows what happened to the single conspirator in the Patsy Fuca case who remains at large, the mysterious J. Mouren.
As for Jacques Angelvin, he was released from prison in the spring of 1968 and returned immediately to France and relative obscurity — although he did succumb to an opportunity to earn some needed cash by writing magazine reminiscences of his experience in American jails. He said that generally he'd found them more comfortable than many French hotels.
An intriguing, if somewhat bizarre, final note: In August 1968, New York State Police reported finding the bodies of two hoodlums upstate, apparent victims of a gangland execution. Both were known to have been formerly highly placed in Angelo Tuminaro's Brooklyn-based narcotics ring.
One of the corpses was Frank Tuminaro, forty, Angie's younger brother. Following Patsy Fuca's arrest in 1962, Frank Tuminaro had taken over as administrator of his brother's clandestine network. But, in the face of stepped-up pressure from law-enforcement agencies, inspired by leads developed in the Fuca case, Frank's operation proved even more slip-shod than his nephew's had been, and in February 1965 he and seventeen others were indicted on narcotics charges. It was another grievous blow to the crumbling Tuminaro organization.
Little Angie, who had remained unobtrusive since his own release from prison in 1966, showed up at his brother's funeral. Detectives who observed the proceedings reported that the narcotics boss, now fifty-eight, looked sad.
A b o u t t h e au t h o r
ROBERT LOWELL MOORE JR., a.k.a. Robin Moore, who was born on Halloween Night (Oct 31) 1925 in Boston, Massachusetts, always wanted to be a writer. True to his Halloween birth date, Robin's choice of topics has frequently leaned toward the supernatural and macabre.
Robin was raised in Concord, Massachusetts and attended Middlesex School and Belmont Hill School. After graduating from Belmont Hill, he joined the armed forces and flew a tour of combat missions over Germany during the closing days of World War II. He graduated from Harvard College in 1949 and went to New York to produce television shows. In 1952 he returned to Boston to work for the Sheraton Hotel Company co-founded by his father, Robert Lowell Moore senio
r. But what Robin really wanted to do was write.
His first novel, Pitchman, was about the burgeoning TV business. He continued to work for Sheraton and as a result of trying to establish Sheraton hotels in the Caribbean in the late 50s, he ran across Fidel Castro, which led to his chronicling the Cuban communist dictator's guerrilla campaign in a non-fiction book, The Devil To Pay. A third novel about Robin's family business, Hotel Tomayne, brought about the end of his career in hotel management and was the start of his full-time writing career.
In 1963 his Harvard classmate, Robert Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy's brother, made it possible for Robin to join the US Army Special Forces as a civilian. Robin went through almost a year of training and then went to Vietnam with the Special Forces and wrote his definitive novel of the Vietnam War, The Green Berets, which was published in May of 1965.
The French Connection followed this first success when Robin joined the New York Police Department in one of their most spectacular drug busts. Robin continued to write and his next big hit was The Happy Hooker with Xaviera Hollander, the story of the most contro-versial madam in New York City.
Robin wrote many more novels about international intrigue and adventure, often travelling internationally to gather background material for his books.
Robin returned to Southeast Asia to write The Country Team about American diplomacy and the Green Beret operations in Asia. A stint as a treasure hunter in the Caribbean led to the The Treasure Hunter. In the 70s, Robin spent a year in Iran and the Middle East researching Dubai, an epic of gold smuggling, oil exploration, and political subversion in the Arab world. One of his more recent novels, The White Tribe, was the result of three years spent in Africa observing American and European mercenaries fighting communist terrorism. After Africa, Robin travelled to Russia where he did extensive research leading to The Moscow Connection, the story of the sale of Russian nuclear weapons to rouge nations.
Robin continues to write and has most recently published with Raymond Flynn, former US Ambassador to the Vatican and former Mayor of Boston, a novel about Vatican intrigue, The Accidental Pope.
a l s o o f i n t e r e s t b y r o b i n m o o r e
BOOKS
The Accidental Pope
The Green Berets (eBook)
The Happy Hooker
MUSIC
The Ballads of the Green Berets (RCA)
MOVIES
The Green Berets - DVD
The Green Berets - VHS
Table of Contents
acknowledgments
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
epilogue
about the author
Table of Contents
acknowledgments
chapter 1
chapter 2
chapter 3
chapter 4
chapter 5
chapter 6
chapter 7
chapter 8
chapter 10
chapter 11
chapter 12
chapter 13
chapter 14
chapter 15
chapter 16
chapter 17
chapter 18
chapter 19
chapter 20
chapter 21
chapter 22
epilogue
about the author