Honor Thy Father (50 page)

As the court recessed for lunch, Judge Mansfield directed that Torrillo return on the following day at 10:00
A.M.
The remainder of the day’s session would be devoted to other government witnesses, several of whom had been flown in from Arizona to testify against Bill Bonanno.

During the lunch recess Bill went to a telephone booth in the corridor and called his father in Arizona, saying that Krieger had done well but that it was impossible at this point to know how the jury was reacting. He spoke for only a few minutes, explaining that Krieger was waiting and that they were due back in court in one hour.

On the way out of the federal courthouse, several reporters greeted Bill by name and stopped to exchange a few words. Some of the reporters had come to court on that day to cover the bribery trial of the city’s former water commissioner, James I.. Marcus, which was being heard on the ninth floor, two floors below fudge Mansfield’s courtroom; and as they talked to Bill they wanted to know how his case was going, and they smiled and seemed conciliatory. The press is friendly in person, Bill thought, but they kill you in print.

The restaurant, a few blocks from the courthouse, was crowded, as were all the restaurants in the area at this hour, and Bill and Krieger had to wait standing for several moments. At various tables Bill recognized a few judges, defense attorneys, prosecutors, FBI agents, alleged mafiosi, convicts, court stenographers, bail bondsmen. They were all here having lunch in the same big room—the accused and the accusers. They were co-workers in the crime industry, they kept the wheels turning in the big gray court buildings in Foley Square where decisions were hammered out five days a week, supplying jobs for jail keepers and magistrates, barristers and bondsmen, providing news for the press and customers for restaurants—they all fed off one another.

After lunch, which was barely digestible, Bill returned to the courtroom; and soon there was the rap of the gavel, the arrival of the judge, and the first of a half dozen witnesses who would testify during the afternoon. The first witness, a co-owner of a cocktail lounge in Tucson, testified that he had accompanied Peter Notaro to a Tucson travel agency where Notaro, at Bill Bonanno’s request, ordered five Montreal-Tucson airplane tickets to be billed to Torrillo’s card. The second witness was the travel agent who booked the reservations with American Airlines, and the third witness was the man behind the counter at the Tucson airport who identified Peter Notaro as the individual who signed for the tickets in Torrillo’s name. The government’s witnesses also included a secretary from the Southern Arizona Bank, who testified that Notaro had opened an account there under the name of Peter Joseph; and a Long Island mailman who said that he had delivered letters in the past to the Bonanno’s East Meadow home that were addressed to Carl Simari and also to William Levine. Among the mail addressed to Levine, who had occupied and owned the East Meadow house before selling it to Bill Bonanno, was a Mobil Oil credit card that Bill had occasionally used at gas stations, paying the charges through 1967 until July 1968, by which time Bill had left New York and had moved West. Since July 1968, according to another government witness—a Mobil Oil credit representative who had been flown in from Missouri—the Levine account was currently $329.90 in arrears. But the next witness, William Levine himself, a genial middle-aged man, testified under cross-examination that he had no qualms about Bill’s using the Mobil Oil card because Levine had never requested the card, did not know it had been sent to the East Meadow home, and felt no responsibility for its use—the card had apparently been mailed by Mobil, unsolicited, to many people in the hopes of luring them to Mobil gas stations. Levine also admitted that when he sold the East Meadow property to Bill that the mortgage payments continued to be made under the name of Levine, with Bill’s money; and Levine had also allowed the lighting and heating to be paid by Bonanno under Levine’s existing account. Bill’s home telephone number during those years, which was unlisted, was under the name of William Levine.

The government’s parade of witnesses continued to appear during the next day, and among them were three Tucson attorneys who had handled legal matters for Bill in the past but who now were in New York for the government to refute statements that Bill previously made to the grand jury—statements contending that, after he obtained Torrillo’s card from Perrone, he consulted with the Tucson attorneys about the legality of using it since he was then having some second thoughts; and, according to Bill’s grand jury testimony, the attorneys told him in substance that as long as Torrillo knew that Bill was using the card and had given his permission, there was nothing illegal about it.

One after another, the attorneys took the stand, were sworn in, and were questioned by Assistant United States Attorney Phillips. The first attorney, Garven W. Videen, who had represented Bill on two tax cases in Arizona, told Phillips emphatically that Bill had not consulted with him about Torrillo’s card. The second attorney, William E. Netherton, who was Bill Bonanno’s representative in 1968 when Bill was charged and convicted with exceeding the speed limit by five miles, conceded that Bill may have asked him about Torrillo’s card. “It strikes a chord,” Netherton recalled, during cross-examination, “it strikes a chord.” But Netherton, when further questioned by Judge Mansfield, said he could not “recall specifically” a conversation in which he had told Bill Bonanno that it was all right to use a card in another man’s name.

The third attorney, Joseph Soble, who had represented Bill in various matters in Arizona beginning in 1961, admitted to having met with Bill and Hank Perrone in Tucson in February 1968—a month before Perrone’s death—and having told Bill at that time to be careful about using Torrillo’s card because “it could be a forgery problem,” to which Bill had replied in essence, according to Soble, that there was nothing to worry about because Torrillo owed Bonanno approximately $3,000, and “that was the way it was going to be taken care of.” Soble also testified that Bonanno later in 1968 charged about $500 in airplane tickets to the account of Soble’s law firm, which Bonanno had attributed to an office mix-up, but which had nevertheless angered Soble, had caused “strong language” between the two men, and had ended their long social relationship. Soble added in court that while no one in his firm had paid for those tickets, and while he was not sure that the tickets had ever been totally paid for, he did admit to hearing about a partial payment.

As Bill Bonanno sat listening to his former attorneys testifying against him, his reactions varied between bitterness and frustration, dejection and a sense of betrayal. He was most frustrated because now in court he could not defend himself against their versions of the past, could not differ with them, remind them of things that they had not told the court. He was forced to sit silently, revealing no emotion, as the government sought to prove its perjury counts against him with the help of Tucson men who had once been his defenders and friends. Bill found it extremely difficult to appear unemotional at this point in the trial—he felt somehow that he had been deceived, used, sold out, and he suddenly had a vision of himself as the star of a sardonic and satirical showing of
This Is Your Life
, a production in which his old friends and associates were assembled to tell him in public what an abominable person he was.

Later in the afternoon, in response to a subpoena issued on behalf of Krieger requesting the right to read the tape recordings or written notes of the interviews that the police had with Torrillo following his arrest, three members of the New York City Police Department appeared in court with transcripts of two lengthy sessions with Torrillo—the first was conducted on June 25, 1968, the second on July 9, 1968. While the police department was initially reluctant to release the transcripts of the two taped interviews, Judge Mansfield determined that the defense attorneys had a right to read those portions relating to this case; and immediately after the material was made available, Krieger and Sandler quickly read it, reread it, and underlined those paragraphs that they would use in their continuing cross-examination of Don Torrillo.

What they hoped to prove to the jury was that Torrillo had somehow been intimidated by the police into changing his story about the card being lost to its being stolen by Perrone and Bonanno; and in return for his cooperation, Torrillo would be spared the legal penalties of harassment that he could otherwise anticipate from law enforcement authorities. If the defense could prove this or even if it could suggest this to the jury, it still might not help the cause of Bonanno or Notaro; and yet Krieger and Sandler were as convinced now as they had been before the trial began that their only chance of success was in destroying Torrillo’s credibility as a witness.

So Torrillo was called back to the witness stand, and Krieger, reading from the transcripts of Torrillo’s interviews with the police, proceeded to question the witness about what he had said and what had been said to him. Torrillo appeared timid on the stand now, his hands clasped tightly in his lap; and among the spectators in the courtroom, he could see Detective Frank Goggins and Sergeant Robert J. O’Neil, two of the men who were quoted on these transcripts. Detective Goggins and Sergeant O’Neil sat grim-faced in the second row.

“Do you remember this?” Krieger asked, pacing slowly before the jury, holding a copy of the transcript in his right hand, “do you remember making this statement?”

“Which page?” demanded Phillips, who had a duplicate copy at his table.

“Thirty-nine,” said Krieger, who then quoted from a passage in which Torrillo was being interrogated by Sergeant O’Neil.

“Your Honor!” Phillips said, standing in court, “I object at this point. I don’t see any inconsistency whatsoever.”

“Yes,” Judge Mansfield agreed, turning to Krieger, “I fail to see that you have established any relevancy of this on cross-examination. It fails to show anything inconsistent with what the witness has previously testified. I’m referring to this last question and answer.”

“Well,” Krieger said, “if Your Honor please, I respectfully submit that this shows the motive of this witness to fabricate the story.”

“I object to the speeches by Mr. Krieger,” Phillips said quickly.

“Well, it is in before the jury now,” thejudge said, mildly piqued. “I will allow it to stay.”

Krieger continued to question Torrillo and to quote from the transcripts for nearly a full hour; and in one transcript Sergeant O’Neil was quoted as telling Torrillo, at the end of a day’s interrogation: “We’ll see you at another date.…As a matter of fact, to show that it is not one-sided, if we can do you a favor, and maybe we can…” And Torrillo responded: “Look, I will tell you anything, Mr. O’Neil, anything, because I haven’t committed any crime, so I’m not worried. Do you understand?” The sergeant concluded: “As a matter of fact, I have you on the credit card, you realize that?”

“Your Honor,” Phillips said, “I object to that statement by the sergeant. That’s no question. There has been no answer in response to that.”

“Let’s see whether there is a response,” Judge Mansfield said. And nodding to Krieger he added, “All right, read the response.”

“I am going to, Your Honor,” Krieger said, and turing back to Torrillo he continued, “And you are responding, ‘…that was the only thing I was worried about, but I leveled with you because you put it to me in such a way that I had to level with you, you see. I didn’t know from’—something inaudible—‘if they come all I can do is pay. I’m trying not to, you know.’ ”

Krieger stopped reading, and asked Torrillo: “Do you recall that?”

“Yes,” Torrillo said.

“Was it true?”

“Yes.”

Krieger began to read again, quoting Sergeant O’Neil as saying, “ ‘Well, you don’t want to pay.’ And you are saying, ‘Well, if I can pay I will.’ And the sergeant saying to you, ‘…if you pay them what you are doing is rebutting your original statement. Like I say I am not particularly interested in that end of it.’ ”

Krieger asked Torrillo: “Do you recall that?”

“Yes.”

After Krieger completed his cross-examination, Leonard Sandler stood to ask Torrillo additional questions, concentrating on a discussion that Torrillo had had with another detective, named Doherty.