Dear Mr. Ramos,
I have reviewed your letter of October 16, 1989 wherein you ask whether the District Attorney will refile charges. This is to advise that once charges are nolle prossed they cannot be refiled.
—letter from Thomas Bonavita, assistant public defender, Warren County, to Jose Ramos, October 23, 1989
On a miserably wet November morning a week after the Ohio trip, Stuart GraBois was back in his office. Jose Ramos was back there too, for one final visit before the end of his latest stint in federal custody at GraBois’s behest. This was the third time the prosecutor had writted Ramos from Pennsylvania’s Rockview prison, each time for several months at a stretch, each time in the futile hope the inmate’s resolve would crack. As the two men waited for Ramos’s attorney Leonard Joy to arrive, GraBois as usual cautioned Ramos not to speak without his lawyer present.
“You just need to listen,” GraBois said, “and understand that your situation is about to change. The decision you make today in my office will affect you for the rest of your life, because by tomorrow, word will be out all over this city—and then beyond—that you are the guy we’re looking at in the Patz case.”
GraBois knew that Channel 4 reporter John Miller planned to break a big story on the case that night, a story that for the first time in ten years would put a name and a face on its prime suspect. Never mind that Jose Ramos’s near confession was over a year old by November 1989; to a still fascinated public, it was the first news in years. From his reporting in the days following Etan’s disappearance, then slogging through the drainpipe in 1982 and trekking to Israel three years later, Miller had been a presence at several pivotal moments. He liked to refer to himself as the Patz case’s Zelig, recalling the Woody Allen character who’d been cleverly edited into newsreel footage of real-life historical events.
In Ohio, GraBois had pointedly ignored the large white satellite uplink truck with the “WNBC—New York” logo emblazoned on its side that was parked outside his hotel every day. Tipped off to the Ohio trip, Miller had hauled a producer, camera crew, and the company truck across state lines to Columbus, where they’d all cooled their heels for several days, staking out the Feds.
By this time, Miller had become a high-profile reporter at Channel 4, the NBC network’s flagship affiliate, where he’d made a name for himself with his irreverent, ballsy coverage of New York mobsters. He was often seen on camera in his signature trench coat, trailing after feared crime boss John Gotti and lobbing pointed questions. But now the reporter had taken a long-shot bet, hoping to roll the camera, knock on a door, and record history when it was opened by a seventeen-year-old Etan Patz. It didn’t happen. After delicate negotiations back in New York both the disappointed GraBois and the persistent Miller agreed that it was finally time for the Ramos angle to surface. Miller would get a big scoop to help mitigate his wild goose chase out of state. For his part, GraBois hoped a new lead would result from getting the word out. Press was always a tricky proposition, but as the Patzes had found out in those first few days, it was often the best way to mobilize resources. Plus, GraBois hoped the publicity would have the extra benefit of putting added pressure on Ramos.
“You and I both know you could have a real hard time after the evening news tonight,” GraBois said to Ramos. “I can make it easier time by putting you in a federal institution, but you have to give me something in return. Think about it, and remember, we’re not talking about just the next few years. If I get the Taylor case reopened, you’ll be looking at a lot more time than that.”
When Leonard Joy arrived to join his client at the U.S. Attorney’s Office a few minutes later, he confirmed that the press had been calling his office for comment. Ramos knew then that GraBois wasn’t just playing with him, and that his life would be in danger once the story aired. But the warning only seemed to make him more defiant. He’d been hearing GraBois talk tough since the two had first met, and so far that was all it had been—just talk. For months the prosecutor had been waving the dismissed 1986 Pennsylvania charges under Ramos’s nose, but the inmate had done some research. He’d written to his former attorneys at the Warren County Public Defender’s Office to ask if there were any teeth to the threat. An assistant public defender had written back just the previous week to say those charges couldn’t be refiled and the Joey Taylor case was over and done with.
Ramos kept his mouth shut in his characteristic, stony glare and left GraBois’s office for the last time before being returned to Pennsylvania’s Rockview prison a few weeks later. If you think this is over, GraBois thought as he watched the marshals lead Ramos out of the room, you are so wrong, pal.
John Miller’s story was heavily promoted all day and led both the five and six o’clock broadcasts. It was more than ten minutes long, a standout for the local nightly news, and it recapped ten years of the case, prominently featuring its prime suspect. The story was picked up in the next days by the New York print press, and by the time Ramos left for Pennsylvania his name and face were out there.
GraBois called Rockview to fill them in and learned that was unnecessary—some of the inmates had seen the news coverage. Just to be sure that the authorities knew who they were dealing with, GraBois sent the warden a letter in anticipation of Ramos’s coming bid for parole, detailing his full record with children and advocating against parole.
On his return to Rockview, Ramos was placed in segregation as a safety precaution, banished from other human contact. The solitary cell was protection, but it was also a punishment.
Soon after that, GraBois cold-called the Pennsylvania attorney general in Harrisburg. He didn’t know anyone in that office, but he introduced himself to the person at the other end of the line and made his request. They must think I’m crazy, he recognized with some humor, as he waited for the return call. But he needed the attorney general’s help with his plan. The November elections had put a new Warren County district attorney in office, and GraBois had once again put out feelers to resurrect the Rainbow case. DA Joseph Massa was a well-known, well-respected attorney who’d practiced in Warren for twenty-one years, but he could not prosecute the Joey Taylor rape case. Massa had revolved straight through the courthouse door from the Warren County Public Defender’s Office one floor below. While there, he had ably defended Jose Ramos, arguing successfully for the suppression of his confession. With such a clear conflict of interest, there was no point in GraBois even approaching him. When he called Massa to introduce himself, it was only to ask if the new DA would make a formal request, as protocol dictated, to the Pennsylvania attorney general asking him to take over the case. Massa agreed immediately, and he told GraBois that conflict notwithstanding, he’d be more than willing to help in any way he legally could. But this was now a case under the jurisdiction of the attorney general of Pennsylvania, Ernest Preate—if he chose to take it on.
GraBois planned to make it easy for the Pennsylvania AG, because the New York prosecutor would offer to do all the work. He would come down there and try the case himself, if the attorney general would swear him in as a temporary deputy.
“What do you make of this?” Preate had summoned Marylou Barton to his office to discuss the request he’d just been told about from this unknown federal prosecutor.
Barton looked incredulous. “It’s absolutely bizarre.”
Chief Deputy Barton ran the attorney general’s new Child Abuse Unit, the logical place to place this request, but she had to feel it was merited. “Bizarre,” she went on, “but exactly the kind of case I created the unit for. If this man is so serious about it, we should by all means pursue it.”
The diminutive Barton was outwardly no-nonsense and reserved, until she climbed onto her very tall soapbox, the one that had brought her to this office. Crimes against children were as old as bound feet and slavery, but talking about them—let alone prosecuting them—was a relatively new phenomenon, unfamiliar and uncomfortable legal territory. Barton was battling judges who didn’t know how to rule on these cases, lawyers who didn’t know how to present their evidence, and untrained testifying physicians who showed their gross ignorance on the stand. Once, at an autopsy, Barton had watched a forensic pathologist examine a young victim with forty-four broken bones, then announce that the baby had died of SIDS—the mysterious catchall of sudden infant death syndrome.
Barton was on a crusade to recruit and educate medical specialists, police, and attorneys to recognize abuse, then use special interview techniques for children, and move aggressively on these crimes. She held workshops and training sessions, and watched the new methods begin to take hold across the state. But along the way, even though the AG’s Office didn’t officially have jurisdiction over actual cases, actual cases started finding them. Cops who weren’t satisfied with a coroner’s rulings, grandparents who balked at cursory findings, would come to plead for a champion and a second hearing. In its first few years, Barton’s unit had revived and resolved ten unsolved cases.
Sexual abuse presented a particular challenge. There was often little evidence, sometimes no more than the word of a child, who might have waited weeks or months to come forward. Beyond any other barrier, Barton was up against the “ick” factor—no one wanted to enter into the nightmare world of pedophiles, to hear the acts described, or to meet the human beings who perpetrated them.
The Joey Taylor rape case presented all these problems, and more. Barton walked back to her office shaking her head in doubt. Not because the case was being shifted to their office—in small towns, conflicts of interest were fairly common. But this was a nearly four-year-old crime, with a transient young victim, and lots of moving parts. And then there was the wild card of Assistant U.S. Attorney Stuart GraBois, coming in from another jurisdiction in an altogether different state and asking to take the case himself. Barton had practiced law for seventeen years. She’d argued—and won—in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. But she had never in her life heard of anything like this. That a New York federal prosecutor cared enough to pursue a small-town crime all the way to Pennsylvania was unheard-of to start. But that he wanted to prosecute it personally? Barton suspected she’d either be dealing with a wacko or some Kojak type from the big city, thinking he was coming down to rescue the small-town folk from their own ineptitude.
Then she met Stuart GraBois. The actual meeting place was a halfway point, at a conference room in a Philadelphia federal courthouse. Barton brought her chief investigator, Larry Gerrard, a crusty former Philly homicide detective. Gerrard had already started his own investigation—calling old friends on the force in New York—to check out GraBois. Although the federal prosecutor got high marks all around, neither Barton nor Gerrard knew what to expect before the meeting. And they didn’t want to take this case any further if it was going to turn into a turf war.
“If he walks in and pulls the pushy Fed routine, I’m going to tell him he can kiss my ass as I walk out the door,” Gerrard vowed to Barton on the drive to Philadelphia.
But their concerns were unfounded. The stakes were high for GraBois, and he was charming and solicitous. He’d brought his half of the team—Barry Adams and the Taylor family, whom he’d flown in again, this time from Texas. GraBois didn’t feel quite like he was walking into an audition, but he badly wanted the face-to-face to convey personally what a bad guy Ramos was, and how crucial it was to keep him from getting released. If this didn’t pan out, he’d played his last card and Ramos could be gone in a matter of months.
GraBois had one more goal. Underneath the surface of the easygoing team player he presented, GraBois believed the prosecution was only going to work if he could run it his way. After all his effort, he wasn’t prepared to take a backseat to anyone else’s direction. He just had to convey all that… in a nice way.
Luckily, Barton cared about winning, not who took the lead. She was immediately struck by GraBois’s knowledge of the case, the absolute certainty with which he was pursuing it, and his utter lack of hesitation amid the unknown legal territory of a state prosecution. He never once seemed to question himself or the cause, and she couldn’t help but be swept up in the force with which he commanded the room. She was also moved by his willingness to pour his heart out to a total stranger about the years of work he’d put into the Patz case and the passion he felt for its resolution.
Joey Taylor was twelve now, a chunky, slow-talking boy with a sweetly sad demeanor who seemed younger than his years. When Barton herself questioned him, it was clear he’d make a good witness. She also saw how despite their obvious differences, GraBois had already built a rapport with the Taylor family. And she walked out of the meeting all but certain a jury would too. Before she left the room, she told GraBois that she was going back to Harrisburg to recommend to the attorney general that the case go forward, with GraBois as her partner.
COUNT 1: Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse 18 Pa. C.S. 3123 (5) (F-1)
Defendant Jose Ramos did engage in deviate sexual intercourse with Joseph Benjamin Taylor, age 8, on more than one occasion, June 20–21, 1986, in that he did have anal sex with the victim, said victim being under the age of 16 years and not the spouse of the defendant….
COUNT 2: Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse 18 Pa. C.S. 3123 (5) (F-1)
Defendant Jose Ramos did engage in deviate sexual intercourse with Joseph Benjamin Taylor, age 8, on more than one occasion, June 20–21, 1986, in that he did have oral sex with the victim, said victim being under the age of 16 years and not the spouse of the defendant.
—Criminal Complaint: Commonwealth v. Jose A. Ramos, July 9, 1990
On a hot, sticky July morning two months later, Stuart GraBois left his office to catch a flight to central Pennsylvania. He could have gone directly to the airport from home that day, but knowing he could finish a good two hours’ worth of work in the morning, he drove into lower Manhattan first. Then at 10 a.m., he sorted, shredded, and otherwise cleared his desk as he did every day before leaving, and headed to LaGuardia. He had a one o’clock flight to Harrisburg, and calculating the drive time to the airport, he was allotting himself the usual two hours to check in. His wife and kids loved to joke about all the extra time he spent hanging out at the gate, but it was a good place to catch up on his reading, and with thunderstorms in the forecast, he was leaving nothing to chance. Ninety percent of operational success was contingency planning. If this trip went the way he had meticulously planned it, he thought, as he bought a paper and sorted through his sheaf of legal documents, tomorrow would be the best day in his long and successful career.
GraBois was going down to Rockview prison, to be there to look Jose Ramos in the eye when they finally arrested him. It was the week after July Fourth, and GraBois loved the irony of Independence Day. He almost wished he could have done it on the Fourth, but it wouldn’t have been worth giving up the long weekend with his family. And of course the folks in the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office wouldn’t have tailored the dates just for the sake of a little poetic justice. Justice all by itself was good enough.
GraBois scanned through the headlines and tried to focus on the news of the day. It looked as though New York would be home to the next Democratic convention. The Marion Barry trial was in full swing in D.C., as witnesses testified they’d delivered cocaine to his mayoral office and watched him snort up at least thirty times. And the jury was going into deliberations on the second trial of Raymond Buckey, one of the accused child molesters of the infamous McMartin preschool case in California. Along with the first trial, which had ended in acquittal, the case had cost the state more than $13.5 million. GraBois smiled as he read this, thinking of the $42 hotel room he’d reserved in State College, Pennsylvania, for the night.
Off the plane in Harrisburg, GraBois headed to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office and temporarily traded his federal prosecutor’s hat to be officially sworn in as special deputy attorney general. It sounded much more dramatic than it was—there was no “Raise your right hand and repeat after me,” just a stack of paperwork to sign. But each piece of paper gave him the authority to pursue his goal over the last two years: to keep a promise he’d made to his prime suspect.
When GraBois had told Ramos he was going to have him rearrested and prosecuted for Joey Taylor’s rape, he had meant it. Over and over, Ramos had laughed at him. But GraBois never bluffed. He firmly believed that bluffing was the worst thing a prosecutor could do. It made you lose credibility, a precious commodity.
The paperwork signed, newly appointed Pennsylvania special prosecutor GraBois got into a car with Marylou Barton and Larry Gerrard, his brand-new colleagues, and headed deeper into the Pennsylvania countryside. “Keep your eye out for bears,” Gerrard said to GraBois, who thought he was having some fun with the city kid until he saw a black, clawed figure, looming taller than the car and not ten feet from the side of the road.
Two hours later, they stopped for the night at the nondescript motel in State College and had dinner across the street on the Penn State main campus, home to more than forty thousand students. Dead center in the state, the university was some ten miles south of SCI Rockview, the medium-security state prison where GraBois intended to keep his appointment the next day. He slept fitfully, with the alien thrum of crickets threatening his sleep, and awoke to a gray, muggy morning. GraBois, Barton, and Gerrard drove to the prison’s gates, to be met by troopers Dan Portzer and Gene Casasanta, who had driven in from Warren, two hours in the opposite direction.
Stepping out of the car, GraBois craned his neck and looked up. As a veteran prosecutor, he’d been in a lot of prisons. This one was right out of a Lon Chaney movie. Rockview was built in the early 1900s and boasted a seven-story rotunda building at its entrance, flanked by five-story cellblocks on either side. From the outside, the rotunda’s front façade gave the appearance of one giant, seven-story-high room, entered through a small mousehole of a door, like the front gate of a Gothic castle or a Victorian workhouse. So this was where Jose Ramos had been hiding from New York authorities, thought GraBois.
Ramos had already served three of his three-and-a-half-to-seven-year sentence, and he was doing everything he could to shorten his stay. He was hoping to move into a job that gave him more freedom, and he had even been talking about weekend furloughs and work release. GraBois’s sense of urgency had been growing.
This was the prosecutor’s first visit to Rockview prison. After all of Ramos’s trips to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York, it seemed only right that GraBois would reciprocate for this event. He had choreographed it so carefully.
The folks at Rockview had never seen a prosecutor come to witness an arrest. Usually he charges the crime from back in his office, then a sheriff or state trooper shows up to take the prisoner quietly out the back in handcuffs for arraignment before the judge. But GraBois had deliberately staged the scene differently. He wanted Ramos to remember this day, to have the image of Stuart GraBois breathing down his neck ingrained in his mind. A power trip? GraBois thought it was an effective way to keep the pressure on him. His own experience from the day Ramos came close to confessing in his office told him to do anything he could to throw Ramos off kilter.
The guards in the room watched the prosecutor with curiosity. The Rockview staff wasn’t aware of the Patz case, but Ramos himself was a familiar character. Most inmates there were processed in and out without much notice. Even the child molesters, who were notoriously singled out, could go low-key if they chose to. Ramos, however, made an issue of anything and everything. He was very much in the public eye—as a weirdo to the other inmates, as a nuisance to the staff. He claimed now to be an Orthodox Jew, one of the lost tribes that had ended up in Spain. This meant special privileges; he balked at haircuts and filed grievances claiming religious persecution. SCI Rockview was happy to see him go.
The cell door opened.
“C’mon, you’ve got visitors.”
“Who?” No one came to see Ramos. He hadn’t had a visitor since he’d been there.
“You’ll see.” Ramos was told nothing of what lay ahead, just brought down a flight of stairs leading off his tier. The stairs led to a holding area separated by steel doors from a control center where GraBois had positioned himself—the man in control. As Ramos reached the stairwell landing, a gray-haired figure appeared through the glass window cut out of the doors ahead. Coming down the last steps, the face came into clear focus; the hard stance, the familiar features… still closer, until only the two locked doors kept both men apart.
When Ramos first saw GraBois, his mouth automatically curled into that familiar half smirk he seemed to save just for the prosecutor. Jose Ramos liked to tell people GraBois was obsessed. GraBois himself bristled whenever the term was used. He himself thought obsession was pursuing little boys to violate their bodies; it was following them home from school, dating mothers to get to their kids. GraBois had no doubts about who was obsessed.
For a brief moment, the two men stood regarding each other through the glass windows separating them. Then Trooper Portzer stepped forward and snapped on his handcuffs. “Jose Antonio Ramos,” said Portzer, “you’re under arrest for involuntary deviate sexual intercourse in Warren County, Pennsylvania. You have the right to remain silent,” he continued. As Ramos was read his rights, he turned white, the smug look replaced by one of total shock.
Then, when he was finally brought through that last door and within earshot, GraBois couldn’t help himself. As Ramos was led past to the waiting patrol car outside, the prosecutor leaned in to whisper, “I told you so.”