Echoes of My Soul (18 page)

Bulger, however, insisted that Whitmore mentioned the Eighty-eighth Street apartment before anyone else discussed the address.

The detective denied that Whitmore was badgered for hours before he began to make admissions. “It was maybe a half hour,” he said.

But Keenan pointed out that Bulger told James Hosty it had been an hour.

“I was all mixed-up,” Bulger claimed.

“But you didn't say you were mixed-up when you saw Mr. Glass in July 1964 and said there were no errors in the summary you wrote for Hosty,” Keenan noted.

“That's because I needed to refresh my memory,” Bulger retorted. “I got straightened out talking to the other detectives.”

“And that was more accurate than the summary you wrote for Mr. Hosty three days after Whitmore's arrest?” Keenan asked.

During question after question, Keenan demonstrated the efforts Bulger made to make Whitmore's admissions fit the facts—such as when Whitmore was asked by the detective what time he left Brooklyn to travel to the Upper East Side.

“He said ten
A.M
., which you knew would not have given him enough time,” Keenan pointed out. “You asked him if it wasn't more like eight-thirty, because you knew the clock radio had stopped at ten thirty-seven.”

“Around that time, yes, sir. Approximately that time, yes, sir.”

Nearing the end of his cross-examination, Keenan moved on to whether Bulger had told Whitmore that the victims were still alive.

“Now, Mr. Bulger, did you or anybody in your presence, any detective or any official, tell Whitmore that the girls were alive?” Keenan asked.

“No, sir. Not to my knowledge, not in my presence.”

“Nobody told Whitmore that the girls were alive?”

“Not that I know of.”

Keenan continued to pursue the point. “So you don't recall whether Whitmore was told the girls were alive?”

“I don't recall it,” Bulger replied, with his eyes flicking back and forth among all the jurors and Keenan.

“Whitmore told you the reason he pulled down the shade after he had cut the girls, and after he tied them up, was because he was afraid they would get up?”

“That's what he said.”

“Didn't that indicate to you, Mr. Bulger, that Whitmore thought the girls were alive?”

“That's what he said.”

Keenan relentlessly pressed again. “Did you ever tell Whitmore that you had just talked to the two girls on the telephone and that they weren't mad at him, that they had only been in the hospital a short time?”

“I'm not sure. I might have.”

“You might have said that to Whitmore?”

“I might have,” Bulger replied defensively. “I might have.”

“You might have told Whitmore that you might have just talked to the two girls, Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert. You might have said that to him?”

“I can't remember.”

“What is your best recollection? Did you?”

“I say I might have.”

“You might have?”

“Yes.”

“And if you did, that was a lie, wasn't it?”

“Well, it's all the way you look at it.”

As Keenan wrapped up, Edward Bulger sat in the witness chair with his head down.
Defeated,
Glass thought, but he felt no pity for the detective or his colleague Joseph DiPrima.

It wasn't just how they'd conducted their investigation, Glass thought. But what really rankled him was that they'd also been unwilling to concede when faced with the facts that they'd made a mistake.

In fact, they were so concerned about their egos and reputations, Mel Glass believed, that they were willing to provide the real killer with his defense. Or as he'd said to John Keenan before he began to cross-examine Bulger, “They'd rather see a vicious predator like Robles set free on the streets, and send an innocent man to prison for life, than admit they were wrong.”

S
itting at the prosecution table, Mel Glass seethed. He tried not to show it, but his eyes hardened as he followed Mack Dollinger's movements in front of the jury as the defense attorney delivered his final summation.

What had set Glass off was that the tall, handsome and capable man exhorting the jury to acquit his client had once worked for Frank Hogan. Dollinger knew the ethics that Hogan demanded of his attorneys. Yet, he had just accused the New York DAO of framing Richard Robles, which was as vile as it was absurd. The most galling aspect was that Dollinger knew better. In fact, Dollinger had reason to know since the night of Robles's arrest on January 26, 1965, that his client was as guilty as sin.

 

When Glass left Robles in the holding area that evening to speak to Mack Dollinger, Glass told the defense attorney everything the young killer had just admitted: “ ‘It wasn't panic. Something went wrong.' ”

Dollinger had then spoken to Robles and, leaving his client with David Downes, approached Glass with an offer: “My client just confirmed everything you told me. We're willing to accept a plea to murder, but no death penalty.”

Mel Glass shook his head. “I can't make that commitment.”

“Then let me talk to Al Herman,” Dollinger suggested.

“Talk to anybody you want, including Hogan,” Glass responded.

The defense attorney had then gone back to Robles, who, in his attorney's absence, had confessed to Downes and the other cops who'd entered the room. There was no claim or anything to suggest that anyone had threatened his client, or abused him, or tricked him into anything. Simply put, Robles's guilty conscience had gotten the best of him finally.

 

Glass had no objection to a defense lawyer zealously representing his client and forcing the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. It was the crucible, the sine qua non, of the truth-finding trial process. That was as it should be. But to know that his client had committed the murders, and yet turn around and obfuscate the truth to the jury about the alleged venal motives of the police and DAO—actually stoop so low as to accuse them, with no factual basis in the record, of committing crimes to frame his client—well, that went beyond the pale, Glass believed.

It was clear to Glass that Dollinger was desperate. In both his examination and cross-examination of the witnesses, John Keenan had carefully debunked George Whitmore Jr.'s confession, while demonstrating why Richard Robles's incriminating admissions were to be believed.

Reaching deep into his arsenal of advocacy, Dollinger conjured up what many defense attorneys resort to when the facts and the law do not support their cause: the frame defense.

“The district attorney's office felt that the case against George Whitmore wasn't strong enough because that piece of circumstantial evidence—that photograph that George Whitmore said came from the apartment—they found out couldn't have come from the apartment,” Dollinger said. “They felt that the inconsistency in the George Whitmore story made the case against Whitmore something they would prefer not to try.”

Dollinger walked over to stand in front of the prosecution table. “The Delaneys were their deliverance, because only through the Delaneys could they possibly get somebody else to stand in for George Whitmore,” he said. “And perhaps save the honor of the police department. They had to get a stand-in and they didn't care if it made sense or not.”

Shaking his head as he glanced at Keenan and Glass, Dollinger continued. “If Robles were not an addict, if he were a human being like you or me or somebody else, do you think he would be on trial in this case? Do you think he would be the person that they would ask you to convict? Do you think that they would suggest to you that based on this evidence, on these facts, that this man is guilty if he was not an addict? He's a perfect patsy for the police, perfect.”

Mack Dollinger whirled and walked back to stand next to his client. “Who is going to come to his defense? Who is going to scream and yell about him? Who cares about an addict? Who cares?”

Patting Robles on the shoulder, he added, “When they find, or if they find, the right man, then the prosecution will offer Mr. Gynt as their witness and not leave it for the defense to offer him as ours.”

 

Mel Glass was still seething when court recessed for the afternoon and he went back to the office with John Keenan to prepare for the People's summation the next day. The skull session began with Glass shaking his head and blasting Mack Dollinger's tactics in frustration and anger.

“John, maybe I'm in the wrong business,” he lamented to his colleague. “I've been at this for seven years, tried scores of felons for all kinds of mayhem they perpetrate on innocent people, and have heard all sorts of excuses from defense attorneys. But listening to Dollinger's summation was such an incredible outrage—a position that is so contrary to the truth.”

As Glass paced about the office, Keenan took a seat and let his younger colleague vent. “Two girls get slaughtered and the defendant's admissions are completely corroborated,” Glass went on. “And with no evidence, just rank speculation, Dollinger tells the court and jury that we framed his client. And how do we do it? According to the defense, we picked out two people, the Delaneys, who we don't know, who have criminal records up the wazoo, and we tell them to tell us to incriminate someone we don't know. And, of course, we are so venal, we let the real killer roam the streets with impunity. And this ‘patsy,' this so-called stand-in, Robles, who we don't know from borscht, lo and behold, makes admissions on tape that corroborates what he told Downes, the police brass and the Delaneys. What a coincidence! And this nonsense with Gynt, the doorman? Give me a break here!”

Glass sat down on a club chair. “And let's get this straight, the only reason Gynt appears in this case is because we presented him to the defense on a silver platter. The defense knows that the reason we didn't call him is because of the conflicting versions he gave about what, if anything, he saw and heard. And he's totally unreliable.”

Sighing, Glass looked at Keenan. “And, John, what really rankles me are the Brooklyn cops. Instead of admitting they made a mistake, they circled the wagons, stuck to their stories that Whitmore is the guy and gave Robles a complete defense.”

Glass threw his hands up in the air. “What in the hell is happening to our justice system!”

It appeared that Glass had run out of steam, so Keenan chose that moment to speak. “It's okay, Mel. We made a mistake and we're paying for it. But what you did was restore the credibility of our office and everything the justice system is about. We're going to convict this fine fellow, and we have you to thank for it.”

Glass looked over at Keenan, one of the best of the best, who'd won scores of murder convictions in his career. Keenan was smiling, and suddenly Glass felt humbled. He grinned.

“Okay, okay . . . let's talk summation,” Keenan suggested.

“I think you start with showing again why Whitmore's confession is untrustworthy,” Glass said as he began to tick off the reasons. “John, it's not just that what Whitmore said was inconsistent with certain facts, the scenario he was presenting doesn't square with what happened. He's connecting dots that have been laid out by the Brooklyn cops. For example, Bulger tells him that he just spoke to the girls and they're alive. So what does Whitmore do? He says he pulled down the window shade because he was afraid they might get up after he stabbed them. But the real killer knows damn well that these girls, after he butchered them, would never be standing up again, much less be alive.”

Keenan tapped the legal pad he'd been making notes on. “And, of course, Mel, the killer would have known right then that the cops were lying. But not George Whitmore, because he had no reason to believe otherwise.”

Glass nodded. “Then Bulger's got Whitmore going through the lobby door that doesn't open, with no Exit sign on it, leading to God knows where, and gets knives from a kitchen table that doesn't exist. Oh . . . and he said he entered the apartment through a service door that Kate Olsen testified was bolted locked.”

Glass paused and rubbed his chin. “And let's not forget the Whitmore Q&A with Hosty. It first starts at two
A.M.
and ends at two-fifty in the morning. Then an hour goes by and they pick it up again at four oh-three and this one ends at four-twelve
A.M
. And here's another example of the Brooklyn cops trying to conform Whitmore to some immutable facts—like what Robles really did to the two girls.”

Picking up a copy of the Q&A that recommenced at 4:03
A.M
.
, Glass read:

Glass flipped the Q&A onto the conference table. “Bulger knew from seeing those crime scene photos of the deceased that Janice Wylie was disemboweled. So, of course, he wasn't satisfied with Whitmore saying he cut her around the face. I wonder what happened in the hour or so in between the two sessions. It's a classic example of someone talking about a case that's totally separate from reality.”

Then there's the photograph, Glass noted, which was the sole reason Detective Edward Bulger thought to question Whitmore about Wylie-Hoffert. “If he'd stopped and thought it through, Bulger would have known it didn't make any sense. What killer is going to keep something of significant evidentiary value, a photograph, allegedly of the deceased no less, tying him to the murders, for eight months and write, ‘To George From Louise' on the back so that he could show it to his friends? Keep a photograph of the victim in the most infamous murder in the city, show it around, bragging, ‘This is my girlfriend,' and not worrying that someone might say, ‘Hey, that's Janice Wylie'?

“It was a disgrace,” Glass pointed out, “for Bulger to ignore Lynch's report from Max Wylie that the blonde in the photograph wasn't his daughter.”

Glass noted the substantial difference between Whitmore's reaction to the accusations and that of Robles. Throughout his interrogation Whitmore either quietly denied his complicity, asked to go home or repeated what the detectives had fed to him in a dry monotone.

“Compare that to Robles who broke down crying,” Glass said. “And says after he confesses, ‘I don't want to talk about it anymore. Please, I want to erase it from my mind.' Which one sounds like he has a guilty conscience?”

 

Just as he'd once set up the mosaic of the prosecution case, the next day, Keenan methodically placed each tile together leading to the full picture revealing the guilt of the defendant “beyond any and all doubt.” As Glass sat in his seat and ticked off the points on his legal pad, Keenan took command of the space in front of the jury, laying out each.

“Isn't it perfectly clear that Whitmore had about as much to do with killing Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert as Abbe Mills did?” Keenan asked the jury. “Mr. Whitmore was Trilby and Bulger was Svengali, and that's the way it worked.... I submit to you that Mr. Whitmore doesn't have the vaguest idea what happened to him that night in the Seventy-third [Precinct] Detective Squad.”

Keenan followed through on his conversation with Mel Glass that the Whitmore statements were totally disconnected from reality—that they weren't merely inconsistencies.

“So let's look at Whitmore's route home to Brooklyn,” John Keenan said. “That is the most magical part of the whole Whitmore statement, it's from
Alice in Wonderland.
From Eighty-eighth Street he walks back to Forty-second Street. He takes the subway home from Forty-second Street to Brooklyn. He gets out of the subway, walks to his house about eight and a half blocks from the subway station. And what does he do? He sits on his stoop. And then what does he do? He goes to his uncle's house to borrow money to buy a hot dog.”

Keenan held his arms akimbo and, shaking his head, exclaimed, “Where's the blood? Where was the blood on Whitmore? It wasn't on Whitmore. It was on Robles's left trouser leg. It was on the green shirt that was in the paper bag when he got to the Delaneys' and had saturated through to the T-shirt underneath. That's why there was no blood on Whitmore.”

Keenan picked up the Q&A statement and held it up for the jury to see. “The blood wasn't on Whitmore, who in this statement said that he took the knives from the kitchen table drawer. The blood wasn't on that man. You know why? Maybe you forgot this. There wasn't a kitchen table in the kitchen, so there couldn't have been a drawer.... Remember when I asked Bulger about the lobby door that led to the service stairway? He told you he didn't know very much about that door. Kate Olsen testified she didn't even know where that door led to. But Whitmore went through the locked door with the nonexistent Exit sign, leading in his mind to God knows where, and gets knives once allegedly inside the apartment from a kitchen table that doesn't exist.”

Keenan turned and pointed at the defendant. “And when you blow the Whitmore smoke away, do you know who sits in front of you? Richard Robles.”