His Name Is Ron (48 page)

She was excused from the stand at 3:45
P.M
. We expected Dan to call me immediately, but when instead he requested a sidebar conference, Patti realized that he was asking to postpone my testimony until Monday. She knew how anxious I was to get this over with, but Dan thought it was too late in the day and he did not want to split my testimony with a weekend. All of us exited the courtroom feeling disappointed.

That evening we met Kim at the Cosmos restaurant in Calabasas for my birthday dinner. During the evening several patrons came to our table to offer support. When a chocolate cake—my favorite—arrived at our table, the restaurant staff gathered around to sing “Happy Birthday.” To my surprise, the other patrons joined the chorus. Applause filled the room.

Tears glistened in our eyes. Left unspoken was the thought: Ron should be here with us.

On Saturday morning Patti set out a spread of assorted bagels, coffee, sliced apples, tomatoes, and cream cheese. Dan came over for about an hour to talk about my testimony.

We still did not go over specific points; rather, Dan merely wanted to reinforce what everyone else had been telling me. “Try not to lash out at Baker,” he advised. “You've remained dignified since Day One. Don't stoop to his level now.”

But I warned, “If he presses a particular couple of buttons, I'm going to bite back.” I explained that if he in any way attempted to demean Ron I would not sit there quietly. “And if he insinuates that our family pursued the civil trial merely as a means to gain money or celebrity, I will launch an attack.” In fact, I had written responses for those two issues, and I hoped—deeply—that Baker would give me the openings I needed to use them.

Lauren was up at 4:30 on Monday morning. Patti awoke at 5:15. Managing the shower schedule, she got her mother up at 5:30, and roused me at 5:45. We rushed about, but few words were spoken. I knew that everyone was wondering how I must be feeling. In fact, I was a bit more apprehensive than I had been on Friday. I wanted to be done with it.

Jim Ziegler and Barb Duben accompanied us.

A chill ran down Patti's spine as she heard Dan call “Fred Goldman” as the plaintiffs' sixty-fifth and final witness. She felt the color drain from her face. Her trembling hands were cold.

The courtroom was eerily, unnaturally quiet as I raised my right hand to take the oath.

As I answered Dan's questions, I sometimes glanced at my family and, whenever I did, my voice cracked. I broke down several times as I reminisced about Ron and related memories that any parent could understand—from Ron's habit of missing the school bus to his days in the Indian Guides youth program. I acknowledged that Ron was no angel and told the jury about his traffic tickets and subsequent arrest, and the problems that led him to file for bankruptcy.

Patti saw dark anger in my eyes as I stared holes through the defendant.
I told of Ron's dream of opening a restaurant and described the ankh. “It stands for eternal life.” I sobbed.

I spoke about the ankh necklace that Ron wore and shot another venomous glance at the killer. “He doesn't wear it anymore,” I said.

Sniffles and muffled sobs came from various corners of the room. Behind her, Patti heard a man weeping. It was Jim Ziegler. We had never seen him that emotional, even at Ron's funeral.

Dan displayed photos of our family—on vacation, at a wedding, clowning around on the sofa, and at Lauren's Bat Mitzvah, which had concluded with Ron, full of life and energy, looking into the camera and saying, “God knows where I will be in a year.”

Lauren broke down. Patti slipped an arm around her.

“Did you love your son?” Dan asked gently.

“Oh God, yes,” I answered, gripping a tissue.

“Do you miss him?” Dan asked.

My response was barely audible. “More than you can imagine,” I whispered. “There isn't a day goes by that I don't think of him. My life will never, ever be the same.”

I was ready, willing, and able to face Baker's cross-examination. I hoped that he would question me with the same hostile, condescending attitude that he displayed in front of most of our witnesses. Come on, I urged silently, say something derogatory about Ron. Try to paint me as a money-grubbing celebrity seeker. I had my written answers memorized.

To my dismay, Baker's early questions were fairly mild and innocuous. He clearly did not want to alienate the jury by being harsh on Ron's dad.

Finally he asked about the book—this book—that our family was writing. Aha, I thought, he's going to open up the subject of money and celebrity. I acknowledged that we had negotiated a book contract some time earlier, and I awaited his next, sneering question about fame and fortune.

But Baker said, “No further questions.”

For the remainder of the day Patti sensed that I was in a “weird mood.” She was correct. I was deeply disappointed that Baker had not opened the door further.

If he had charged that I was trying to profit from Ron's death I would
have responded, as calmly as I could, “You're wrong, Mr. Baker, I'm in it for justice, and if you'd care to change places with me, I want you to remember that you have a son and I don't.”

And if he had attempted to suggest that Ron was, for whatever reason, the killer's real target, I would have declared: “For you to suggest in any way that my son was responsible for his own death is an outrage.” Then I would have pointed a finger directly at the defendant and continued: “Your client, that butcher, that murderer is, in fact, the only one to blame for this!”

THIRTY-SIX

None of us wanted to do or say anything that would reflect badly on our case. Reporters continually tried to get us to answer questions. We remained silent, but we worried that our facial expressions and body language might convey the wrong message. The constant pressure to “stay calm and do the right thing” drove us to the brink. “It's so unnatural,” Kim complained. “How long must I keep my chin up and my mouth shut?”

One day Kim reached her limit. On our way into court a black GMC Suburban drove by, with windows tinted so heavily that no one could see inside. But we knew that the killer was arriving, driven by his bodyguard. Succumbing to an overwhelming temptation, Kim surreptitiously lifted the middle finger of her right hand in his direction.

“Did something set you off?” a reporter yelled.

She longed to respond: “Yeah, how about thirty stab wounds?” but bit her tongue instead.

Later, during a break in the proceedings, Dan Abrams of Court TV said to Kim, “Caught ya'.” He informed her that their camera had videotaped her silent salutation. “But don't worry,” he added quickly, “we're not going to use it.”

After lunch, however, other reporters told her that their networks were going to run the clip. Kim was frantic that her impulsive gesture might somehow affect the outcome of the trial, but she felt better sometime later when we discovered that there was a “legal precedent” for her gesture. It occurred during the second day of the killer's testimony, and is recorded in
the thick
Reporter's Daily Transcript
labeled November 25, 1996. There, in Volume 22 of the official trial record, on pages 99 and 100, is the passage:

Q. Now, the cut on your middle finger is one that still bears a scar, does it not?

(Witness reviews finger.)

A. Yes.

Q. Left hand middle finger, right?

A. Yes.

(Witness displays finger to Mr. Petrocelli.)

As the trial neared its conclusion, Dan often stayed overnight at the Doubletree, where he could work twenty-four hours a day if necessary. When Kim expressed her appreciation for his devotion to the case, he explained, “I'm proud to be part of it. It was the right thing to do.”

The hours of preparation paid off in the courtroom. Dan seemed to have a photographic memory. At times he had to argue motions on an instant's notice, yet he cited case law and facts as if he had spent the night cramming for that particular topic.

Tom Lambert, Peter Gelblum, Ed Medvene, and Yvette Molinaro handled their areas of expertise with the same fire and brilliance as Dan. Peter commented to me, “It's easy to get up and go to work when you know what you're doing is right.” This team was a well-oiled machine that presented our case so forcefully that the defense sometimes seemed bewildered. In fact, the entire defense case was unremarkable. Robert Baker attempted to play the same tired song, searching for any way to suggest that the killer was an innocent victim of a grand conspiracy. But Judge Fujisaki refused to allow him to put the LAPD on trial.

It was not until we saw Judge Fujisaki in action that we came to realize just how ineffectively Judge Ito had conducted the criminal trial. Judge Fujisaki acted quickly, firmly, and brooked no nonsense from either side. We concluded, more decisively than ever, that one of the major reasons that the defendant got away with murder was because Judge Ito was starstruck, bullied, and never in control of his courtroom.

This time, prevented by Judge Fujisaki from spitting out vague tirades and forced to confine themselves to specifics, the defense sputtered.

Many of the witnesses were holdovers from the criminal trial. Baker called former detectives Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter, as well as criminalists Dennis Fung and Andrea Mazzola—and others who had conducted
the initial investigation. Except for an occasional lapse (Dennis Fung was noticeably shaky) these witnesses told a generally uniform story of a professional investigation, and the results pointed inexorably toward the killer.

In the criminal trial, molecular biologist Dr. John Gerdes had harmed the prosecution with his assertion that the LAPD was a “cesspool of contamination.” But now he could cite only three DNA tests that showed signs of contamination. Under a tight cross-examination by Tom Lambert, he conceded that he could find “no direct evidence” of contamination of any evidence.

Pathologist Dr. Michael Baden attempted to counter the testimony of our expert pathologist, Dr. Werner Spitz, who had told the jury that he believed the murders were committed by one person in a very short period of time. Dr. Baden suggested that Ron might have remained on his feet for five minutes or longer, struggling with his assailant. One of the reasons for this conclusion, he said, was that blood from Ron's neck wound saturated the left side of his shirt and pants, and he would have had to be standing for this to occur.

But under cross-examination, Dr. Baden grew frustrated when Ed Medvene displayed a photo of Ron's shirt and pants. Yes, the left pants leg was saturated with blood from a wound to his leg. But the shirt was stained on the right side, not the left. Ron was found lying on his right side, and the blood had obviously collected after he had fallen. Dr. Baden tried to recover, explaining that he really did not mean to use the word “saturated.” He finally admitted that Ron's wounds were so severe that he may well have lost consciousness within seconds.

A chief concern for the defense attorney was the dramatic Harry Scull photograph showing the killer wearing Bruno Magli shoes. In a desperate attempt to restore their client's credibility, they called their most absurd “expert,” photo analyst Robert Groden. Dan had learned that Groden was the defense team's third choice. We knew for certain that one of their other experts had declared the photo to be authentic, and we assumed that the second expert had agreed because, to find Groden, they had to reach beneath the bottom of the barrel.

No one can simply take the witness stand, declare himself an “expert,” and issue pronouncements. First, he must present his qualifications to the court, and the judge decides whether to certify him as an expert witness. The slightly built, fifty-one-year-old Groden admitted that he was a high school dropout who had never taken a course in photography. But he claimed an early interest in snapping photos, and this set him on his way to becoming an “expert.” Two decades ago, he said, he had worked as an
optical technician for a film company, and he also held a job with a company that duplicated slides. From 1976 to 1978 he was a photo consultant to the congressional committee that was investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He claimed to have testified four times before congressional committees; in fact, his most recent appearance was to answer charges that he had stolen photos of the Kennedy assassination and sold them to
Globe
magazine. In the past twenty years he had been paid twice—once by the
National Inquirer
and once by a Korean political party—to analyze photos purportedly showing ghosts.

Peter Gelblum argued, “The fact that he simply sits around his house looking at photos and deciding whether he thinks a picture is fake or not does not qualify him as an expert.”

Judge Fujisaki appeared quizzical, as if to ask the defense: Is this the best you can do? In fact, it was, so the judge declared, “His credibility will be determined on cross-examination.”

Cleared to testify, Groden immediately began to attack the authenticity of Harry Scull's photograph. He explained that he had taken the picture to a Kinko's Copy Center, made a photocopy, and enlarged it to eight times its normal size. Working with this, he pointed out a dozen “anomalies” that, according to him, indicated that the photo had been altered.