Born to Lose (12 page)

A lot of us cops played high school football and so did Joe. The difference was, Joe could have made it big, we all thought. Everyone around here remembers Gary Lyle, who went pro with the Chicago Bears. Well, Joe and Gary tore up the conference as juniors but, in a practice session just before the start of his senior year, Joe dislocated a shoulder and that ended his season and any hope of a scholarship.

Two months prior to the Hoss-Lubresky escape from the workhouse, Fescemyer recalled, he and Zanella rented a schoolbus and filled it with kids from the poorer areas of Verona.

These kids never went many places, so this one time we put about thirty-five of those kids in that bus and took them over to the workhouse for a tour, sort of a crime prevention program. Well, once inside we saw this large man standing there, like someone out of those muscle magazines. It was Thomas Lubresky. If we saw Stanley Hoss that day, we wouldn't have known it. In that summer before their escape, we'd heard of Hoss but didn't really know him. He hung out more in New Kensington, Brackenridge, Tarentum, and Indianola. But as to Lubresky … what a scary guy!

Verona wasn't the sleepy hollow you might expect. There were a good twenty bars in town, the mills were humming, and good money was made, so, of course, you had the workers coming off shift, then finding a barstool for a shot and a beer. We even had a black speakeasy on Diamond Way, the alley between the two business streets. A juke box was in there, card games, dice, and drinking. This was basically a segregation thing. The town fathers
would let the blacks run without a license as long as they stayed in their own bar. And basically they did. The few blacks there were in town had no problem with this, and the whites didn't either. Then there was the Griltz Hotel and the Track Inn where go-go girls were featured, a new thing at that time. These were probably the two wildest places in Verona.

Zanella's other good buddy in the Oakmont Police Department was Dick Zoller. “In the late sixties we had young people, longhairs and all, come in from Pittsburgh and Penn Hills,” said Zoller.

Remember the girl that got killed by the National Guardsmen at Kent State, Allison Krause? She hung out on Verona's Main Street. The drugs started coming in. Kenny Eichledinger made his first drug arrest in 1967. It was for marijuana. Soon we were all making these types of busts. We started seeing LSD, speed, quaaludes. You could see and feel the social change. It hit the big cities first, but it came to small towns, too.

But telling you about Joe, oh yeah, he was a favorite with everybody. He laughed all the time. His wife, Mary Ella, was happy-go-lucky, too, dark-haired, real pretty girl, pretty kid. Joe, handsome as he was, had a big nose and we'd razz him: “Hey Joe, you oughta go to Florida and pick oranges. You could hang by your nose and have two hands free … become a millionaire.” Good-natured stuff. Once, Joe and I pulled a raid on the Legion Hall. We got all these porn films. We maybe kept them a little too long, watched every damn one of them, hootin' and hollerin' like young guys will do. Stupid stuff, really. Drank and worked together, hung out and had fun. Me, Fescemyer, the Maroney boys, we were all cops with a cop mentality, you know. We did more to help than anything else. But with us, being a cop was being special. No one knew what being a cop was unless you were a cop. That's what we thought. We stayed together, mostly in our own circles, shooting pool, playing softball for the bars. We took care of one another.

. . .

Only infrequently did the six-man Verona Police Department convene all together for a formal meeting. The shift work and days off made this difficult. Besides, all information glided smoothly from one officer to another by radio or phone, or by exchanging news at shift change. In this way, Officer Joe Zanella learned of the Hoss and Lubresky escape from the workhouse, of Hoss's presence at Punch Painter's place, and of the failure to track him down. Lubresky hadn't been seen at all since the escape on September 11, and as for Hoss, the thinking went, he must have been spooked
by the horde of cops and dogs, complete with helicopter, loosed on him on the 14th. Surely he'd left the area, probably to another state.

The cops knew few escaped convicts were long successful at staying on the sky-side of prison bars. Usually they were busted in another crime or nabbed for a foolish traffic violation. Since Hoss was unlikely to have assets to sustain him, he probably would soon turn to burglary or robbery. Of course, he could turn himself in, but this Hoss would never do. Still, where was he?

. . .

On September 18, one week after the workhouse escape, Mrs. Carol Meredith of Hudson, Ohio, drove to a dinner engagement at the Holiday Inn in Boston Heights, about fifteen miles south of Cleveland. She pulled into the parking lot at 6:45 P.M., locking the ignition and doors by habit before going inside. When Carol Meredith came out three hours later, her 1964 yellow white-top Chevy convertible was gone.

. . .

Friday, September 19, dawned as a perfect example of Indian summer. The sun shone all day in a particularly blue sky, raising the temperature to a pleasant 70 degrees by noon. At 3:00 P.M., Verona's schools let out and small clusters of students could be seen, laughing, cutting up, and making plans for the weekend. Whoever could manage to get a jump on rush hour in Pittsburgh and its suburbs was doing so. The exceptional weather brought out an unusual number of people to shop along Verona's Main Street, while away the time over coffee at Donna Lynn's Café, or enjoy a beer at Futule's Tavern. Particularly at week's end, much conversation turned toward “God's Pleasure,” which was, of course, Friday night football. Though it was early in the season, Verona High's game was already shaping up as an important contest. Cribbs Field would be packed.

As the time approached 4:00 P.M., the end of his shift, Chief Blackie DeLellis drove over to Joe Zanella's house.

Joe's comin' on shift, so I get out and go sit on the passenger side and Joe gets behind the wheel to take me home. Everything around town was quiet, so I didn't have much official stuff to pass along. At my house at the time, I was pourin' new concrete steps, so I changed quick and started workin'. Joe hung around for a few minutes and we were conversin' like always, general stuff, sports and the like. Deer season came to mind, and I was tellin' Joe about my neighbor's boy baggin' a buck last year that went two hundred pounds. Joe said that's all he needed, to take up huntin'.
He was so busy with his job, the VFD, the reserves, and whatnot, and now his second was born, little Michelle—We were all at the baptism just the Sunday before—why, if Joe even looked at a deer rifle, his Mary Ella would be havin' fits.

We both lit up cigarettes, but soon Joe said he had to be goin' in time to pick up Janina Yanchak, our tax collector. Whoever was on would always drive Mrs. Yanchak to the bank to deposit her receipts.

In this last minute we were for some reason talkin' about McDonalds. We didn't have one, but Pittsburgh did. I said, “When you stop there, you get the bread, the meat, and some potatoes, sort of like a meal.” Joe says, “Yeah, and the dressing on the hamburger serves as a salad,” and laughs. That's the last bit of conversation we had before he got in the car and left.

A meeting of the Oakmont police was scheduled for their shift change at 4:00 P.M., so as to gather as many officers as possible. This was to be Oakmont's very first meeting about arbitration and collective bargaining. The Oakmont force did have a union, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), but no one was much satisfied with FOP representation. It was well known that, as one cop put it, “You'd go in and ask for a raise and they'd tell you to stick it where the sun don't shine.” The Oakmont cops now favored joining the Teamster union and were planning to push things along with this meeting.

Joe Zanella's good friends, Zoller and Fescemyer, were in attendance, along with seven or eight other officers. Claude “Speed” Buttgereit, a former policeman thought by most to be “a nice enough guy but a miserable son-of-a-bitch,” was manning the communications desk. The rest of the men filed into a back room of the station to begin their meeting. Just before the door closed, someone yelled out to Buttgereit, “Hey, Speed, don't bother us—this is important stuff we're talking.”

About 4:30 P.M., as the Oakmont meeting got under way, Officer Joe Zanella was returning from Allegheny Valley Bank, bringing Mrs. Yanchak back to her own car, which she'd left outside the borough building in which Verona's police station was housed on the first floor. Escorting Mrs. Yanchak was routine for Joe; their many short car trips together had made them well acquainted. Mrs. Yanchak had crocheted a beautiful afghan for Joe's new baby. For his part, Joe knew the names, habits, and many peculiarities of Mrs. Yanchak's three cats, one dog, and “littlest joy”—her parakeet. She talked, and Joe, with bemused forbearance, listened.

. . .

Fred Mangol was only twenty-two years old, but he was already assistant manager of Winky's Drive-In Restaurant, located along Washington Boulevard about five miles south of Verona. Between 4:15 and 4:20 P.M., while preparing for the rush-hour crowd, Mangol saw someone walk into the restaurant and approach the counter. Christ! Mangol thought, is that … ? The patron looked a little different than he remembered, with shorter hair and a couple-three days' growth of beard, but as soon as their eyes met Mangol knew for certain. It was Stanley Hoss. Mangol knew Hoss from their early school days. He knew Hoss's wife's family, too. He had seen Hoss rarely, which was more than enough for Mangol, as Hoss was no friend, only a schoolyard bully and, later, someone to be avoided.

Hoss ordered coffee, “black, to go,” from waitress Elizabeth Parker. Mangol turned aside to busy himself, but he was worried. Everyone knew the law was after Hoss. He'd been declared a fugitive after the workhouse breakout, and it was only the previous Sunday that Hoss had eluded capture in a big manhunt after being spotted. “Now he has to show up here, in my restaurant of all places,” Mangol recounted.

Maybe Hoss didn't recognize me 'cause, after all, I'd put on a couple pounds. I should have just walked into the kitchen till he left, but as he was paying for his coffee I turned toward him and he was looking right at me. I almost called him by name but instead said, “Hi, how are you?” He sneered, grabbed his coffee, and went out the door. Through the window I watched Hoss get into a yellow Chevy convertible. When he pulled out, I wrote down the plate number, then right away called the cops. I didn't know what would happen to me if Hoss found out, but I figured I had to make the call.

Connected to Pittsburgh police operator Clifford Baxter, Mangol said nervously, “Stanley Hoss, the guy that escaped from the workhouse, has just been in my place. He's heading toward Allegheny River Boulevard.” Baxter asked what Hoss was driving.

At the bottom of Washington Boulevard, which is mostly a long hill, Hoss would have to turn left toward Pittsburgh or right toward Verona. Baxter dispatched a couple of police cruisers to drive to the roadway where Hoss could be spotted if he headed toward Pittsburgh. However, since Hoss could as easily turn right, Baxter also notified the Verona Police Department.

It was 4:36 P.M. Joe Zanella had seen Mrs. Yanchak to her car and was just getting into his cruiser when he picked up the radio call from Baxter.
Zanella got the essentials: Fugitive Stanley Hoss … Be on the lookout for … yellow Chevy, Ohio plate B1213N.

. . .

After stealing Carol Meredith's car the night before near Cleveland, Stanley Hoss had indeed made his way back to western Pennsylvania. Hoss was a little uneasy about seeing Fred Mangol at Winky's. Hoss didn't know if Mangol would call the cops but thought it unlikely since Mangol had always been afraid of him. Approaching the bottom of Washington Boulevard, Hoss turned right toward Verona, probably intending to see his mistress, Jodine Fawkes. To do so, he had to drive through Verona and Oakmont, then cross the river at the Hulton Bridge. Now on the two-lane, tree-lined road to Verona, Hoss regularly checked the rearview mirror for a cop car, on the slim chance that Fred Mangol had gotten up the guts to rat on him. Hoss reached under a rag on the floor mat, retrieving a gun, which he placed beside him on the car seat. Straight ahead, Verona.

Having received the message about Hoss from Officer Baxter, Zanella was alert for the felon. He knew Hoss's name from the workhouse, and he'd helped search the riverbanks after Hoss's escape. Starting up his cruiser, he drove the fifty yards to Allegheny River Boulevard. It hadn't been two minutes since Baxter's radio call, so Joe thought he had some time to situate himself along the boulevard somewhere, hidden by buildings or trees to wait and watch the passing cars. However, no sooner had Joe braked at the stop sign of the boulevard than a yellow, white-top Chevy went by.

Joe Zanella pulled out behind the yellow Chevy, stepping on the gas to catch up. After closing the gap, Joe could read the plate … This is it! Ohio plate B1213N. For the moment, Joe eased off the gas, following Hoss at several car lengths' distance. In moments, the yellow Chevy came to a red light at Center Avenue.

Hoss had noticed the cop car a block or two back and saw the dark blue cruiser pull onto the boulevard right behind him. Hoss stopped for the light, fuming at the delay and staring closely into the rearview mirror.

The Verona Police Department shared the same radio frequency with Penn Hills, the police department bordering Verona to the south. Since he was the only man on duty, Joe could not call anyone at the Verona Station. It would have been nearly as efficient to call the Oakmont Station, less than one mile away, but Verona was incapable—frustratingly so—of radio contact with Oakmont; any contact with Oakmont had to first be channeled through Penn Hills. So Joe, holding his handset in his right hand, made initial contact with Penn Hills communications center. Herm Trozzi was on
duty. At 4:40 P.M., he heard a familiar voice: “Herm, it's Joe. I'm following this yellow Chevy, driver reported to be Stanley Hoss. I'm at the boulevard and Center, heading north. Can you get a hold of Oakmont for assistance?”