“State, call your first witness,” Tyson said, as soon as every member of the jury was seated. In walked Michael Carbone. To my quiet satisfaction, the marshals who had accompanied Carbone in the hall were nowhere in sight. This meant the U.S. Marshals Service was following Tyson's order.
Carbone was at least two inches shorter than the five-feet-ten indicated on his driver's license. He wasn't as hulking as he appeared in his booking photo, yet it was obvious he still worked out. He cavalierly walked to the witness stand and sat down, almost like he was about to get a haircut.
In spite of our little reunion in the hallway, I couldn't help but think as he was being sworn in, “I'm going to hate to have to listen to this dirt bag.” I noticed how intently the jurors were studying his every movement and expression, and I was hoping they felt the same.
Prosecutor Jim Lewis sauntered up to the podium and greeted Carbone, who nodded in return. Jim then said, “Mr. Carbone, could you please tell us what you know about the events of April 1st and 2nd, 1983?”
The jury's attention, along with everyone else's in the courtroom, was riveted on him as he began. “Let's hope you have some serious stage fright, Michael,” I thought, knowing that life would be a lot harder if he did a good job selling his story.
“It was seven years ago, but I remember it actually started the night before April 1st,” Carbone said. “I guess that would have been March 31st,” he added gratuitously.
“I met Gil Fernandez through my friend, Tommy Felts, who told me Gil was a cop. On that first night, Tommy wanted me to be the security for a drug deal he and Fernandez were planning, because I owned a Thompson semi-automatic machine gun. Tommy agreed to pay me $75,000.”
Jim interrupted and said, “Did you ever receive that money?”
“I got $50,000 of it over the next two months,” Carbone replied.
“Thank you. Please continue,” Jim said.
“Tommy asked me to wait across the street from his house with my Tommy gun and a .357 Magnum. While I was sitting there waiting in my car, I saw Bert Christie come by. He had a gun. Bert stayed for a while and watched the house and then he left. Tommy told me later that…
“Objection, Judge,” I interrupted, “as to what Tommy told him. It's rank hearsay.”
“Overruled,” snapped Tyson. “I will allow for some latitude here.”
“Of course you will,” I said, almost out loud. Carbone spoke with renewed vigor once Tyson said he'd allow the free-for-all.
“Tommy said Bert would be getting a piece of the action from the deal.”
Gil sat looking innocent and unaffected, just as I had instructed him. Bert, however, shook his head with visible disgust on his face.
“The deal didn't go down that night, so Tommy asked me to come to his house again the next day.”
“Continuing objection, Your Honor, as to whatever Tommy is alleged to have said,” I interrupted again, preserving the record. It was fairly obvious that Tyson was going to deny every one of my objections to this hearsay testimony, so the only solution was to record the continuing objection to be used on appeal in event of a conviction. The only other alternative would have been to annoy the jury with incessant interruptions, objecting repeatedly. I believed that would have only led them to think I was hiding things from them.
“Continuing objection noted,” replied the judge.
“The next day would have been April 1, 1983. Is that correct?” Jim asked.
“Yes,” Carbone answered. “I went back the next day, which was April 1st. This time, Tommy wanted me to wait in a bedroom closet and come out with my Thompson when he called. I waited for a long time. Finally, the three guys showed up. Tommy called for me and I came running out of the bedroom, carrying the gun.
“When I ran into the Florida room, I saw Gil Fernandez shoving a chrome handgun into the mouth of the guy in the black T-shirt. Gil always carried an extra gun strapped to his ankle, usually a.38. I think that was one of two guns he used that night.
“Gil was yelling at the guy with the gun in his mouth, “You f***ed over the boss!” There was a collective gasp from the audience, followed by the quiet sobbing of several women.
“There were two other guys on the floor next to him. I was nervous, so I pointed the gun at Gil by mistake. He screamed at me, ‘Point the gun at those guys, not at me!’”
“Then a beeper clipped to one of the guy's pants went off. Gil grabbed it and yelled, ‘Who's trying to call you?’ Then he threw it to the ground.
“While Gil was messing with the guy, Tommy was pulling kilos of cocaine out of an ice chest and transferring them into a duffel bag. When Tommy was done, he went into the other room to get a rope, towels and some cloth.”
“I covered the guys with the Thompson while Gil put on weightlifter's gloves. When Tommy came back, Gil grabbed the rope and tied the guys’ hands behind their backs. Then he took the towels and blindfolded them. Tommy gagged them with the paper towels because he said he didn't want to listen to them beg for their lives. Then he put tape over their mouths to hold in the paper towels.”
“You gagged them, you lying sack of s***,” I almost said, recalling his admission to me months ago during his deposition. I distinctly remembered him telling me that he didn't want to hear the victims begging for their lives. And now he was saying it was Tommy who gagged them.
“Oh, I'm going to have some fun with you on cross, pal,” I told myself, elated that he was going to these lengths to sanitize his image. “Michael,” I felt like saying out loud, “you'd better keep track of the few times you tell the truth. Otherwise, you'll lose them in that vast sea of lies you're telling.”
The silent cross in my head was just getting good when I heard a woman in the spectator gallery start to cry loudly. I then heard a rustling sound, which was the noise made by the people around her as they shifted in their seats and reached out to comfort her.
“Could you please tell us who these victims were?” Lewis asked.
“I didn't find out their names until later,” Carbone replied.
This reference to the victims elicited a collective gasp of suppressed emotional pain from the spectator gallery on the prosecution side of the room. The victims’ families and friends were finally hearing the story from someone who was present when their loved ones were murdered, and their pain was palpable.
A man in the gallery uttered venomously under his breath, “You bastard!” The woman next to him quickly put her arms around him, pulling him close as he started to sob. Tyson shot them a look to make sure it didn't happen again. Halfway out of my seat on the way to make an objection, the judge's stern look aimed toward the audience members stopped me. The shock of seeing Tyson upset at someone other than the defense was enough to keep me quiet—for the moment.
My back stayed bent as I hung in space, leaning partway over the defense table. I looked over at the jury. They were all looking back at me to see if I'd make a bigger stink out of the outburst. But then we all seemed to silently agree to let it go, dismissing it as a somewhat expected event.
Tyson just nodded at Carbone and said, “Please continue.”
As if nothing had happened, Carbone said, “Gil kept telling the drug dealers that they had ‘f***ed over the boss.’”
“Did you know to whom they were referring?” Lewis asked.
“Bert Christie,” Carbone said. “We always took our orders from him.”
Bert slowly shook his head, again with disgust. He turned to look at his daughters, seated several feet behind him in the gallery and mouthed, “He's a liar, liar, liar.”
“OK, Mr. Carbone, what happened next?” Jim asked.
When I was a prosecutor, we always asked that question whenever we didn't know what else to say. Sometimes we alternated that with the other nobrainer, “And then what happened?”
“Gil and Tommy left the house for a few hours to hide the car the victims came in, a Z-28 Camaro. It was brand new, I think—an ’83. I guarded the victims until they got back around 8 o'clock.
“When they returned, Gil told me they had left the car in the nearby woods. Then he told me to give him my.357-Magnum and my Tommy gun. He said to help them get the three guys into my 1980 Grand Prix, which was parked in the carport. I thought we were going to Bert's house. Instead, Gil told me to drive out to Jones Fish Camp on the edge of the Everglades. We got off U.S. 27 and turned down a dirt road. It was pretty dark out there except for some moonlight. The road was deserted and next to a canal. I found out later that the people who live in the trailers out there called it Danger Road.
“Gil told me to pull over. When we got out of the car, each of us was holding one guy. They were still tied and blindfolded. But the smaller guy's gag must've fallen out of his mouth because he asked, ‘Why? Why are you doing this?’”
Carbone said this last line in a detached way, like he was repeating something he had seen at the movies. “These poor people,” I thought as I imagined the impact this testimony would be having on the families. “I can't even offer them my condolences.” They hated me almost as much as they hated Gil. Anything sympathetic I could ever say to them, no matter how sincere, would be immediately rejected as disingenuous.
As I thought this, Carbone looked around, trying to see if the jury was buying his story. Then he continued by saying, “We walked for a while on the road, maybe a half-mile. Then I heard Gil get in the water with the guy he was holding. I couldn't see much because it was almost pitch black out, but I heard Gil tell the guy to drop to his knees.
“I heard two shots and then a splash. I guess the dead guy fell in the water.”
Almost all the victims’ family members and friends were crying now. The details were just too painful. Their agony was no doubt exacerbated by having to hear the nightmarish details from the unrepentant Michael Carbone, the dirt bag who helped torture their loved ones. His lack of remorse over having held the victims at gunpoint for hours and the way he cavalierly described their cold-blooded murders had to rub salt in their wounds.
Carbone continued, “Gil asked for the next guy and Tommy handed him over. I heard two more shots and then another splash.
Gil's family just looked down. They, like me, were waiting for this terrible part of the case to end.
“I was holding the third guy. Gil told me to bring him toward the water but I didn't want to hand him over. So, Tommy grabbed him from me and pulled him to where Gil was standing. I heard a shot. Then I heard someone splashing around in the water.” After a pause, Carbone said, “I guess the guy wasn't dead yet.”
In response, loud sobbing came from a woman in the prosecution-side spectator gallery. One of the victim's mothers had been pushed to the brink. Carbone looked at Lewis for direction. Jim then looked to Tyson for guidance as to whether he should continue over the sobbing. Tyson held up his hand to Lewis and looked over at the crying woman, waiting for her to calm down. Nobody dared do anything in that long moment. As we waited, the room was as silent as a tomb. The only sounds to be heard were the anguished cries.
After the woman calmed down, Tyson nodded to Carbone to continue. He said, “I heard another shot and the splashing stopped. I didn't hear anything after that.”
I looked over at the jurors. Some of them were crying but they were looking away in an effort to squelch their tears.
“Thank you, Mr. Carbone,” Jim Lewis said. “After the murders, what did you do?”
“We heard a helicopter overhead, so we thought we should get out of there. We jumped in the car and drove to a bridge over the intra-coastal. We got out, and Gil took the guns and threw them in the water. I noticed he had blood all over his jeans.”
“When we were on the bridge, Gil turned to me and said, ‘You'd better vacuum the inside of the car and wash it, including the tires and undercarriage. And burn your clothes.’
“Then he said, ‘If you ever open your mouth, Michael, I'll kill your family. Even if you go to China, I will find you. I will kill you and I will kill them.’”
In spite of my earlier admonition that he not show anger, Gil glared at Carbone from his seat at the defense table. I whacked his right knee with my left, letting him know he needed to chill out.
“China? Just listen to this guy,” Gil whispered, staring at him.
I leaned toward him and whispered a warning to him, “Shake your head in disgust, kind of like the way Bert did it; but don't let them see you angry.”
Carbone continued. “After that, we met Christie at a gas station. He came up to the car and asked, ‘Was the job done?’ We told him it was.”
“What did you do then?” Jim asked.
“I drove home and told my wife Rebecca the same story I just told you.”
Lewis had the audacity to have Carbone repeat the whole story again, under the pretext of wanting to know exactly what he said to his wife. I had objected earlier to all that self-serving hearsay garbage, but Tyson had ruled that it could be admitted. Surprise, surprise.
After the jury, spectators, media, court personnel, and of course, the defense, were treated to the retelling of the story, the courtroom was finally as quiet as the Everglades. Jim simply looked at our “neutral and detached magistrate” and said, “No more questions for this witness, Your Honor.”
I had never heard more pleasant words.
_______________
Tyson adjourned the session for the day. After I finished giving a few interviews, I waited for Bill Kelly to work his way through the crowd and take me home.
As I waited, Jim Lewis sauntered over to the elevator and pressed the button. While he waited for the elevator to arrive, he seized the opportunity to speak to me. He leaned forward, cupped his hand over his mouth like he was going to share a secret and said in a taunting stage whisper, “Just so you know, I saw Fernandez following along with the crime details in his mind when Carbone was testifying. It was obvious to me he had been at the scene; I could tell by the look on his face. What's more, he knew that I knew he was doing it.”
Tired now, I just scowled at him and said lamely, “You've been watching too much TV, Lewis.”
The elevator arrived. Jim stepped into it and pushed the button. Right before the doors closed, he said matter-of-factly, “Your client's guilty, Contini.”