Echoes in the Darkness (51 page)

Then he allowed a little sarcasm when he said very neatly, "And with that I will ask Mister Guida to call his first witness ... for the second time."

Costopoulos was the performer, and private investigator Skip Gochenour fed him the lines. They worked as a team at the council table, whereas Guida seldom referred to his legal assistant, or even to Jack Holtz.

Gochenour was a red-bearded ex-cop, built like a Coke machine. He was a savvy investigator who'd worked for Costopoulos on dozens of cases. The private investigator was not reluctant to tell anyone that he believed the Reinert children had been doomed from the moment their mother took out the insurance policies in favor of Bill Bradfield.

He said, "Bill Bradfield had no intention of being a daddy, and couldn't even if he'd wanted to. They already had a daddy and the real one would've helped his children break their mothers will. Those kids were sentenced to death from the start."

He and Bill Costopoulos got Rick Guida's attention within the first two days. One of the prosecution witnesses who'd testified several times over the years in regard to the Reinert murder was a former fingerprint expert who was now retired from the state police.

When Bill Costopoulos was cross-examining him on what appeared to be routine matters at the Susan Reinert autopsy,

he innocently asked, "By the way, did you look between her

toes?"

And when the witness answered that he had, Bill Costopoulos asked, "And did you find anything?"

The witness said that he had, there was a little bit of debris that looked like . . . sand.

"Beach sand?" Bill Costopoulos asked.

"Yes, beach sand," the witness said, with emphasis.

When it was Guida's turn to redirect, he didn't ask how the witness knew beach sand from desert sand. Guida's head was stuck to that high ceiling. Guida was enraged.

He spent much of that day and the next practically impeaching his own witness who admitted that as a private investigator he'd worked with Skip Gochenour. Guida brought in half of the task force to testify that at no time had this former state police corporal ever mentioned to anybody that there were any granules of sand between Susan Reinerts toes.

But that was only half of it. Bill Costopoulos implied that a note found in Susan Reinerts car, with "Cape May" in her handwriting, was further evidence that she could have gone to the beach and been murdered by the Bill Bradfield gang in some sandy place, with one of them transporting her to Harrisburg afterward.

Jack Holtz testified that the note had been thoroughly investigated and referred to a turnoff on the way to teacher Fred Wattenmaker's house where Susan Reinert and her children had been houseguests in the spring of 1979.

Bill Costopoulos and Skip Gochenour had disrupted Rick Guida's methodical, orderly approach.

As Bill Costopoulos put it, "We introduced a couple of grains of sand and Rick Guida brought in sand by the truckload before he was finished."

Rick Guida wasn't going to underestimate these fellows, he said.

As to that Cape May murder theory, it was never seriously a part of the strategy of Bill Costopoulos. He privately admitted that he couldn't go very far with it because of Vincent Valaitis. The thought was that he could sell Sue Myers and Chris Pappas to the jury as possible murder conspirators, but Vincent Valaitis screwed up everything. How do you sell the jury a homicidal hamster?

The hair and fiber expert from the FBI testified that in the dust ball presented to him by Jack Holtz and Matt Mullin during their search of Jay Smiths basement, he'd found fifty head hairs but only one was identical to Susan Reinert's. He said that it matched in more than twenty characteristics.

As to the rug fibers, he said that less than 7 percent of rugs are made of polyester and that he'd found "lustrous" and "delustrous" fibers. He said that fibers clinging to human beings are generally lost after four hours. His conclusion was that she'd picked up the fibers just prior to being thrown into the back of her car.

Jay Smith's lawyer did a job on the FBI's hair and fiber expert. Bill Costopoulos asked questions for which the expert didn't have ready answers. He got him to admit that he didn't know there were four kinds of polyester fibers. Without knowing much about hair and fiber evidence, Costopoulos looked as well versed as the FBI expert in this, the most subjective of the forensic sciences.

When he got back to the council table he whispered to Jay Smith, "How'd I do, teach?"

To which Jay Smith answered dryly, "You get a B-plus in science."

The defense put on its own hair and fiber experts who had far more impressive scientific credentials than the FBI witness, the substance of their testimony being that the hair could be Susan Reinert's or any other brunette's. And that the fiber was red polyester but no more could be said.

It seemed certain that hair and fiber testimony was not going to convict or acquit Jay Smith.

The days passed slowly as the parade of a hundred witnesses repeated testimony that they'd given in other courtrooms over the years.

There was a marked difference in the style of opposing counsel. Costopoulos was never argumentative and seldom objected. He could be indignant with witnesses, even scornful, but not toward Guida. He always looked at Cuida's multiple objections with a faint smile as though he was trying to be more than reasonable with the prosecutor.

Rick Guida was constantly drinking water and dying for a cigarette and rolling his eyes in disgust at what he perceived as the indecisiveness of the judge, who obviously hated Guida's many objections.

Judge William Lipsitt was sixty-nine years old and during the course of the trial marveled that Bill Bradfield had had four women going at one time while he himself didn't even have one until he got married at the age of fifty-five. Judge Lipsitt wore oversized black frame glasses. His slicked-down hair looked suspiciously black. He walked as though he were on the deck of a rolling ship, listing from side to side. The judge was quaint and gentle, and Rick Cuida was annoying him.

The prosecutor constantly asked to come to the sidebar where he and Bill Costopoulos could argue out of the jury's earshot. Cuida was so uncertain about the strength of his case that he had a tendency to overtry it.

The way Judge Garb had handled such requests for sidebar discussion was simple. He'd say no

Judge Lipsitt would say something like, "Uh ... oh . . . well . . . naturally I try to avoid the sidebar."

But he couldn't say no. He'd look as though he'd like to say, "Oh, fudge!"

When Guida would object, he'd often say, "Yes, I guess it calls for a conclusion, but, oh, I'll overrule the objection."

The odd thing was that a great deal got admitted into the record from both sides, yet the trial moved swiftly. Even with Rick Guida doing more eye rolling than Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest.

To a jury who wondered what the Bill Bradfield alibi testimony was all about, Rick Guida once more used the clever device of reenacting the testimony at Jay Smith's trial, with the prosecutor of that trial portraying Bill Bradfield while reading from the official transcript.

And he brought in the Sears employees again to identify Jay Smith as the bogus Brink's courier. Suddenly, the jury was getting the idea that this fellow William Bradfield had told a very big lie for Jay Smith. For some reason.

When the day arrived, Bill Costopoulos, as promised, did a good job of trying to discredit the testimony of Jay Smith's prison buddy Raymond Martray. Martray admitted under cross-examination that he did not tell in earlier interviews that Jay Smith had said he'd killed Susan Reinert.

There were a lot of people in the courtroom including most of the reporters who doubted him when he said now that Jay Smith had blurted, "I killed that fucking bitch."

And yet, three women on the jury jerked their heads in the direction of Jay Smith when Martray said those words. It appeared that at least those three did believe Raymond Martray.

Martray said finally that he'd decided to cooperate with the police because he had children of his own.

"People say that I was a bad cop," Martray said. "I wasn't that bad."

Bill Costopoulos implied that Martray had told the cops that Jay Smith used a "Spanish accent" because he'd read a magazine account of the call to police on the night the body was discovered, wherein the reporter had erroneously claimed that the caller had a Spanish accent.

Bill Costopoulos was all over the courtroom in flourishes, and at one point was right up in Martray's face when Guida jumped up and demanded that he be ordered to back away from the witness.

Judge Lipsitt said, "It's his style," but ordered Costopoulos to ease off.

Apparently, the judge liked Costopoulos personally, and didn't like Rick Guida.

After that testimony was over, Bill Costopoulos said that it was his best day.

Charles Montione was another story. He came in like an extra from Miami Vice, pinkie ring and all. Montione wore a trim goatee similar to the defense lawyer's. He had streetcorner good looks and sported a hairdo like the Wolf Man's. He seemed as though he wouldn't be credible.

Montione testified in a soft cellblock voice. He told of Jay Smith escape plans which added to the consciousness of guilt, but then he told the jury about Jay Smith's "smirking" when Montione asked if he'd killed the Reinerts.

He described the remarkable business of Jay Smith wanting a magazine with a model who was posed in a very particular way.

Montione's attitude as a witness was "I don't want to be here, but I am, and you can believe me or not."

Most people in that courtroom obviously did. The defense was worried about Montione's apparent credibility.

Jack Holtz testified about a nine-page letter he'd seized when he arrested Jay Smith in 1985. It was a letter to attorney Glenn Zeitz, care of private investigator Russell Kolins. It was dated January 14, 1981.

Hie letter from Jay Smith outlined his whereabouts on the weekend of June 22, 1979. He informed his attorney that Grace Gilmore, the new owner of the house, had agreed to let him stay until July 1st, and that he was either visiting or telephoning his wife, and visiting or telephoning his lawyer over much of the murder weekend.

As to the night of Susan Reinerts disappearance, Jay Smith wrote, "On Friday, June 22, sometime in the late afternoon Grace Gilmore came. I heard movement upstairs and went to see what was up. I thought it was my daughter Stephanie returning for some clothes. Grace said she cancelled the trip to shore with sister."

It was extraordinary how casually he tossed in the name of his daughter for his new lawyer, since at the time Stephanie and Edward Hunsberger had not been seen for three years.

He then described his daughter Sheri coming into the house and said he was uncertain if she'd seen Grace Gilmore. It was Sheri's twenty-second birthday, he wrote, and they went out to supper. They returned and moved some of her things to her new apartment at about 7:00 p.m.

Jay Smith claimed in that letter that Grace Gilmore had returned on Saturday and they had coffee and a talk about what furniture he would leave. He maintained that she went down to the lower level of the house to look at the heater. Then she went back to work upstairs and he remained below in the basement apartment. Jay Smith wrote that Grace Gilmore had left in the afternoon but his daughter returned and stayed until after dark. He wrote that his brother came during the late morning on Sunday to determine what furniture was to be taken.

A letter to his brother that was also seized by Jack Holtz pursuant to his search warrant was simply an attempt to coach the brother on testimony regarding that weekend if he ever had to take the stand.

He told his brother that Grace Gilmore had come on Friday and Saturday, but did not mention her presence on Sunday. As to Sunday he wrote, "You came in the late morning or early afternoon. You had granddaughter with you. Sher came late in afternoon and left 8:30 or 9:30 p.m."

As to events after that weekend that he hoped his brother could corroborate, Jay Smith wrote:

1) You moved my stuff.

2) Stuff had been kept intact since you got it.

3) I told you to get rid of clothes.

4) Car remains the same except for normal cleanup and maintenance. Many have driven it.

Prior to the first day of testimony, Jack Holtz had admitted to being scared of Bill Costopoulos who had a reputation for being able to rattle police witnesses and make them look foolish. But Jack Holtz wasn't the same fellow he'd been back in 1979 when he was second banana to Joe VanNort-when he was only thirty-two years old and his hair was black.

He still had those glasses screwed to his face, but he evinced a lot of confidence when he took the stand to describe the seizing of the letters in Jay Smith's cell.

He answered all of the questions on cross-examination in an articulate and careful fashion. He'd answer "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" whenever possible, and remained unruffled when the defense lawyer stalked to the witness box to discuss the seizure of a mans personal correspondence.

Bill Costopoulos was very effective in his use of righteous indignation. He had good timing and didn't pull it from the bag of tricks all that often. In fact he had a gift for creating smokescreens even when he had little substance to work with.