Echoes of My Soul (19 page)

Turning back to the jury, Keenan changed direction. “Now let's start talking about some of the affirmative evidence here and let's put the smoke behind us. Let's talk about the Delaneys. What can you say about the Delaneys? They're no angels. They're not pillars of the community. They're not, in Mr. Dollinger's words, bank vice presidents. The Delaneys told you, a friend of theirs—not an enemy, a friend of theirs—not someone they had a grudge against, but a friend, the common-law husband of Mrs. Delaney's aunt. They tell you that Robles, their friend, admitted the killings to them.”

Keenan put his hands on his hips as he looked at the jurors and rocked back a little on his heels. “I told you in the very beginning of my summation, of my introductory remarks, that a trial is a search for the truth under the rules of evidence. So how do we know that the Delaneys are telling us the truth? Do you think that the Delaneys knew that Abbe Mills, the girl in People's seventy-two in evidence, had been located? Do you think the Delaneys knew that? As a matter of fact, for all the Delaneys knew, and for all anybody in the public knew, for all the world knew, other than certain police officers and certain district attorneys, and quite obviously Abbe Mills, for all anybody knew, the case was solved and it was George Whitmore. Why should the Delaneys mention a solved case? Why should they mention a case that was closed? Why? Because they really knew something about it, that's why.”

Glancing at the defense table, Keenan went on with his summation. “Now the defense suggests in this Machiavellian frame scenario that Robles was made a stand-in for Whitmore. And that somehow the Delaneys got into this act and suddenly the Delaneys came up with Robles's name. How did this all happen? Did the detectives go up to Jimmy Delaney and say, ‘Hey, Delaney, listen. We've got to build a case against somebody because the police department is embarrassed because of this Whitmore situation.' Did somebody go up to Delaney and say, ‘We want you to give us some information on a case you don't know anything about. Hey, but don't worry, we'll give you the information and then you give it back to us. And then you come to an assistant district attorney and you tell it to him.' Is that the way it happened? Where is there any evidence of this?”

Keenan furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Why does Delaney give Robles's name, unless Robles is the killer? Why does he pick on a friend? And if it's a frame, why in the world does Delaney involve his wife? If this is a frame-up, a concocted story between the Delaneys as to the defendant coming to their house, why would Jimmy Delaney complicate it by getting his wife involved? He certainly wouldn't involve his own wife because he knew his own wife was the niece of Robles's common-law wife. He wouldn't have involved Mrs. Delaney. You know why he said his wife was there? Because she was there. Do you know why Delaney said he went to buy narcotics? Because he did go buy narcotics and left his wife there. But the truth makes sense. Where would Robles go after killing these two girls? Would he go to the home of a bank vice president? Or would he go to the home of friends who can give him what he needs right then—first a fix and then a change of clothes.”

Looking each juror in the face, Keenan then moved forward up to the jury rail. “Lest there be any doubt about the credibility of the Delaneys, we know from the testimony and how this case unfolded that the Delaneys are telling us the truth, the whole truth. We know this, don't we? And from the evidence you know how and why. In their statement that the Delaneys made on October 19, 1964, they told Mel Glass that when recounting what Robles said to them, they recalled that he said that during the course of the murders the odor was awful. We know from the testimony of chief medical examiner Dr. Helpern that because Robles punctured Janice Wylie's intestines three times, there was emitted into the room a foul odor. So the science of this case, as testified to by Dr. Helpern, a world-renowned forensic pathologist, corroborates, beyond any and all doubt, what the Delaneys told us that the defendant told them. So either they're absolutely telling us the truth, or they had a crystal ball and made it up out of thin air and forecasted the future—they forecasted the scientific analysis. We also know from the evidence that there were absolutely no police reports that made notice of any odor in that room. So much for the defense suggestion that the Delaneys are merely puppets in this fantasy conspiracy to frame the defendant.”

Keenan walked over to the prosecution table and picked up the photograph of a rear view of the building at 57 East Eighty-eighth Street showing the protruding vents and kitchen windows. He held it up for the jury. “How do we know that Detective Downes, Lieutenant Sullivan and Sergeant Brent testified truthfully about the defendant's confessions to them in the clerical office located on the second floor of the Twenty-third [Precinct] Detective Squad room on the night of January twenty-sixth of this year? They testified that Robles told them that he entered the apartment by climbing through the kitchen window. The testimony in the record is that right after Robles confessed, the police went to 57 East Eighty-eighth Street and checked out the exterior area, looking at the vents in relationship to the kitchen windows. And two days later, photos were taken. So what did they do that night when Robles told them, ‘I went through the window'? They went over to the building. If he didn't make those admissions, why would they have gone over to the building to look? Why would they take the photos? Is this part of what the defense wants you to believe that there's a master conspiratorial plan? There is no evidence of it. Logic and common sense suggests, supported by the evidence, that the police are telling the truth.”

Keenan wrapped up by talking about the tapes. “Now remember when you heard the tapes that contained the recorded conversations between the Delaneys and the defendant in their apartment, and on one of them you heard Robles say to the Delaneys, ‘If I could only plant in my mind that you made this up, and it really didn't happen, like I would take that test.' And he was referring to the lie detector test. Do you remember Robles then said, ‘I can't beat a lie detector test.' He couldn't plant it in his mind, because it did happen, and because they, the Delaneys, did not make it up. He did kill the two girls. That's why he broke down and cried when questioned by the detectives. And that's why he said he was relieved when he learned that Whitmore had been arrested.”

Walking over to the defense table and standing directly in front of Richard Robles, John Keenan continued his speech. “Ladies and gentlemen, in his own words, the defendant, Robles, incontrovertibly stamps himself and marks himself the killer, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but beyond any and all doubt. Never forget that tape, in evidence, when Robles says to the Delaneys, ‘If only I could plant in my mind that this didn't happen.' But he can't plant it there, and it can't be planted in your minds, because it did happen and because he did it.”

Glaring at Robles, Keenan's voice rose. “This is not just some homicide case, not some stabbing, shooting or ligature strangulation, although all serious and horrible. We all now know that this murder case was a deplorable outrage, a slaughter, an annihilation, and”—now John Keenan pointed his finger at the defendant, whose face drained of all color—“the annihilator sits right here, the defendant, Robles.”

I
t took the jury of eight men and four women just six hours to reach a verdict. The spectator gallery, which had been packed throughout the trial, had less than a dozen people in the seats—most of them reporters—when the foreman declared, “We find the defendant guilty as charged.”

It was December 1, 1965. A month later, Richard Robles was back in court for sentencing on two counts of murder. Asked if he had anything to say before the court pronounced its decision, he cried out, “All I can say, Your Honor, is that I did not kill those girls. I'm going to jail for something I did not do!” Unmoved, Judge Davidson sentenced him to the maximum the law permitted: life in prison.

For the next twenty-one years, Robles insisted he was innocent and had been framed by the New York DAO and NYPD. Indeed, many people continued to believe that George Whitmore Jr. had committed the crimes, both in Brooklyn and in Manhattan, or that perhaps he and Robles had committed them together.

Then in 1986, at a hearing before a parole board, Robles announced that he had undergone a spiritual rebirth. And now he wanted to set the record straight.

As he'd told the Delaneys and Detective David Downes, Robles explained to the commissioners that he only planned to commit a burglary when he climbed in through the third-floor kitchen window on 57 East Eighty-eighth Street.

“Miss Wylie was in the apartment. I tied her up. She was nude, and I wanted to have sex with her,” Robles revealed.

Later, when Emily Hoffert told him that she was going to remember his face and that he was going to jail, Robles said he decided he couldn't leave witnesses, who might identify him. “The thought entered my mind. I had to kill. I was out of it.”

When it was over, Robles said, he staggered into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. “The blood had drained from my face. I was like a ghost.... I was a ghost.... I don't know how to describe what I was feeling.”

As of the writing of this book, Richard Robles remains incarcerated in the New York State prison system.

 

As for George Whitmore Jr., the nightmare continued for years. After testifying at the Richard Robles trial, he was sent back to jail to await his own retrials in Brooklyn for the Edmonds and Estrada cases.

However, before either got under way again, the U.S. Supreme Court, having heard arguments in a case known as
Miranda
v.
State of Arizona,
handed down on June 13, 1966, a monumental Fifth Amendment due process, fundamental-fairness decision safeguarding a suspect's rights against self-incrimination. The court ruled that suspects subjected to “custodial interrogation” would have to be informed by their law enforcement interrogators that they had the right to remain silent, that anything they said could be used against them in court, that they had the right to have an attorney present during any questioning. If they could not afford an attorney, one would be provided to them. It did not prevent police from questioning suspects or using the information they gained to further their investigation; however, failure to provide the warnings meant the information could not be used in court against the defendant.

In reaching their decision, the Supreme Court justices cited the experiences of George Whitmore Jr. Writing for the majority opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that courts must be on guard against false confessions gained by police through intimidation or coercion when the suspect was not afforded counsel:
The most recent conspicuous example occurred in New York, in 1964, when a Negro of limited intelligence confessed to two brutal murders and a rape which he had not committed.

The court's decision would have a profound and far-reaching effect on the way in which police conducted interrogations from that point on. It also had a personal impact on the life of George Whitmore Jr.

In Brooklyn, a new district attorney announced that in light of concerns regarding the questioning of Whitmore by Brooklyn detectives, as well as legal opinions that the Miranda warnings could be applied retroactively, his office would no longer pursue trying him for the murder of Minnie Edmonds.

However, it was not so simple in the Estrada case. Even if the defendant's statements to the detectives could not be used, they still had an eyewitness, the victim, who maintained that Whitmore was the man who attacked her. And Whitmore had been convicted of the crime, even if it had been overturned. The district attorney decided that the only fair thing to do for the victim was to retry the case and let a jury decide.

In July, George Whitmore Jr. was again tried for the attempted rape/assault of Alma Estrada. She once again took the stand and implicated Whitmore, who this time did not take the stand in his defense. Based on Estrada's testimony and that of police officer Tommy Micelli, whose “spontaneous” conversation with a young man in a Laundromat did not fall under the Miranda warnings, Whitmore was again convicted.

Whitmore was sentenced to five to ten years in prison. This time he was sent to Sing Sing penitentiary.

However, his attorneys did not give up. After seven months they were able to get him out of prison while his case was appealed on several technicalities. But the appeal could only look at a very narrow set of issues that had occurred during the trial, and not the entire case. In 1971, the New York Court of Appeals ruled four to three to uphold the conviction, though the dissenting judges were harsh in their condemnation of the Brooklyn police and the Kings County District Attorney's Office, suggesting that their conduct was one of “misconduct and ineptitude.”

Whitmore's bond was revoked and he was sent back to prison in February 1972. It wasn't long, however, before new allegations of official misconduct in the Alma Estrada case were raised. Defense investigators uncovered the fact that the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office withheld crucial evidence from the defense, including: Estrada had made contradictory statements to police officers regarding her identification of Whitmore; a relative claimed Estrada had originally identified another man; most damning, the FBI analysis of the button and thread Estrada tore from her assailant's coat did not match the buttons and thread from Whitmore's coat, as the prosecution had intimated at trial.

District Attorney Frank Hogan, ADA John Keenan and ADA Mel Glass made several attempts to persuade the Brooklyn DA to exonerate George Whitmore Jr. He was finally released from prison on April 10, 1973. Not counting the time he was out on bond, he spent almost three and a half years in jails and prisons for crimes he did not commit.

 

The legendary district attorney Frank Hogan remained in office for thirty-two years. He suffered a stroke in August 1973 and died in February 1974, leaving behind an office known for its integrity, professionalism and the even-handed application of the law to all.

John Keenan became head of the Felony Trial Bureau and then later the chief of the Homicide Bureau. In 1983, he was appointed as United States Federal District Court judge for the Southern District of New York. Like his dear friend and colleague, Mel Glass, Keenan has served on the bench, as he similarly performed in the Frank Hogan DAO, with grace, dignity and courage.

 

Although their reputations were damaged by the Whitmore investigation, and there were calls for criminal charges of malfeasance and perjury, the Brooklyn detectives were never held accountable. They continued to maintain that they did nothing wrong. No one, however, was ever able to explain how exactly George Whitmore Jr. was able to give a detailed confession and then a sixty-one-page Q&A statement to ADA James Hosty to a crime he didn't commit, or draw a diagram of an apartment he'd never been in.

Along with the Miranda warnings, the Whitmore snafu would continue to reverberate down through the years. It marked the beginning of a ten-year ordeal of racial tension, riots and turmoil in the city. The reputation of the NYPD suffered a tremendous blow, particularly in the black community, from which it never completely recovered.

 

Mel Glass became the youngest bureau chief ever appointed by Frank Hogan, first as the chief of the Complaint Bureau, and then the chief of the Criminal Courts Bureau, where he was also responsible for the training of new ADAs. In 1973, he was appointed a criminal court judge and thereafter an acting New York Supreme Court justice, where his service spanned two decades. While on the bench, he distinguished himself as a brilliant jurist not only for his encyclopedic knowledge of the law, but also for his even-handed fairness and respect for the maintenance and enhancement of the dignity of the justice system. His passion to do justice never waned. He passed away in May 2010, surrounded by his loving and devoted children and grandchildren.

 

For all of the damage Richard Robles did to other lives when “something went wrong” on August 28, 1963, none was greater than what he did to Max Wylie. In the years following the trials, Wylie's wife, Lambert, and his older daughter, Pamela, both died of cancer.

In 1975, alone, grieving and unable to remove the images of his daughter's brutalized body, and that of Emily Hoffert, from his mind, Max Wylie placed the barrel of a .38-caliber gun against the side of his head and pulled the trigger.