CHAPTER 19
Mel Glass looked over at the defense table as the court clerk handed the jury foreman a sheaf of printouts as he instructed the jurors to take one and pass the others to their peers. Mack Dollinger kept a small smile plastered on his face as he watched the jurors, while Richard Robles sat with his head bowed, staring blankly at the table in front of him. In a few moments, the jurors would hear him talk about the murders in his own words as they read along on the transcripts they’d just been given.
It was November 3, a Wednesday afternoon, five days since Jimmy Delaney last took the stand. After John Keenan finished his direct examination of Delaney, Dollinger had jumped to his feet as though answering the bell in a boxing ring. The thrust of his cross-examination was primarily focused on the promises the prosecution had made regarding the dismissal of the Cruz homicide, Delaney’s criminal history and portraying him as a drug-addicted killer desperate to make a deal.
Through his questioning, Dollinger also implied that Delaney knew that if his story was believed, he would be eligible for the $10,000 reward offered by Newsweek for the arrest and conviction of the killer. Delaney contended he didn’t know about the reward until just before the trial, but the defense attorney merely scoffed at his answer.
Glass thought Delaney had held up well during a day and a half on the stand. He’d looked forward to Margie’s testimony, which was supposed to follow immediately. However, she’d had a miscarriage while her husband was on the stand, and they’d had to postpone her appearance for a few days.
Scrambling to fill the time, John Keenan and Mel Glass decided to introduce the tape recordings of the conversations that had occurred among Jimmy and Margie Delaney and Richard Robles. So the day after Jimmy’s testimony ended, the jury was excused so that the defense attorneys could occupy an office in the DAO to listen to the parts of three separate conversations that the prosecutors wanted to play in the courtroom.
To accommodate the audio presentation, the courtroom had been set up as a virtual sound studio. There was a speaker for the judge, the defense and prosecution, and two speakers for the jury. One of the detectives who’d assisted in preparing the recorded conversations sat next to the machine. He was ready to turn it on and off so that the jury would only hear those portions approved by Judge Davidson. It would take split-second timing. If he waited too long and the jurors heard something they weren’t supposed to hear, it could result in a mistrial; if he turned it off too quickly, they’d miss important passages.
Against Mack Dollinger’s objections, the prosecutors also had the recordings transcribed so that the jury could follow along more easily. All three conversations that were prepared for the jurors had occurred in the Delaney apartment in January ’65 after the better recording equipment was installed. Glass played them for ADA Vince Dermody, the senior member of the Homicide Bureau, who was revered by those participants, commentators and observers of the New York justice system to be without equal. His trial experience and sound judgment set him apart; he was the lead knight at Hogan’s Round Table. And when he heard the tapes, he was extremely pleased that the recordings established unequivocally the evidentiary corroboration that was required to proceed against the defendant and would be able to dismiss with respect to Whitmore.
Judge Davidson informed the jurors that the transcripts were aids to help them follow along while listening to the recordings. “But the real evidence is the tape. What you hear, not what you read, is what’s important here.”
With that, Judge Davidson nodded to John Keenan, who informed the jury that the three excerpted conversations they were about to hear revealed in substance that the defendant, Richard Robles, “in his own words voluntarily incriminated himself.” He began by playing the first taped conversation, in which Robles talked about how he “eventually” got the glasses off Emily Hoffert, that he was “crazy when I killed that girl” and his circuitous taxi journeys after fleeing the murder scene.
In the second tape, Robles told the Delaneys, “If I could just plant in my mind that you made it all up, I would take the lie detector test.”
As that conversation was played, Mel Glass thought about how Robles, instead of taking the test, tried to commit suicide by overdosing. Because he knew he couldn’t pass the test.
Finally John Keenan introduced the third conversation between Robles and Jimmy Delaney. “In this conversation the defendant is reading a newspaper,” he said, pausing for a moment before adding, “I would like to apologize in advance for what you are about to hear, which is graphic in nature, but we believe it is important.” Keenan nodded to the detective, who switched on the machine for the third time:
Robles: It says I forced Janice into an act of perversion. That’s supposed to mean she sucked my dick.
Delaney: You sucked her dick?
Robles: No, she sucked my dick.
Glass noted the sudden blushes, grimaces and scowls on the faces of the jurors. The language had come as a shock, but he was sure that they would also recognize what it meant: Robles had just admitted that he’d sexually assaulted Janice Wylie.
When the machine was turned off, Keenan again apologized for the language. And that, he added, concluded the People’s presentation of the recorded conversations.
The next day Margie Delaney was called to the stand and entered the courtroom. She looked frail and haggard, far beyond her thirty years. Still, when she took her seat, she glared at Robles before turning to face John Keenan.
As he had with her husband, Keenan started with her personal history. She said she’d been married to Jimmy for twelve years and had three kids, ages eight to twelve, Francisco, Nathan and Rebecca. She’d been convicted twice on narcotics charges; the first conviction had been suspended and she’d been placed on probation for the other.
She again glared at Robles, who kept his eyes on the jury, when she identified him as the common-law husband of her aunt Dolly Ruiz. Margie said she’d known him since 1956.
Like her husband before her, Margie recalled the day Robles showed up at her home. He was carrying a paper bag and had blood on his shirt and pants. “I’d just gone into the kitchen to make some coffee when I heard the door buzzer,” she said. “So I was in the other room when Jimmy let him in. But I heard him say that he was in trouble because he’d killed two women.” There was further conversation.
Jimmy left to buy some dope. Robles then told her more about the killings. “He said he hit them with Pepsi bottles to try to knock them out. One of them was unconscious right away, but the other one fought back. He said he cut her throat on one of the beds to stop her from screaming.”
The killer told her that the second girl was lying between the bed and the window when he finished her off. “She was unconscious, but he said she wouldn’t die, so he kept stabbing her in the heart.”
Robles had shown her a pair of pink rubber gloves, which he took out of the paper bag. He’d even pulled them on and pressed his fingers against a mirror to make sure they didn’t leave fingerprints.
There was no particular reason he’d chosen that building or apartment other than the open window had presented the opportunity, Margie said. He’d only wanted money to buy drugs.
The young killer had told her that he’d struggled with one of the girls to remove her glasses. Then he’d tied them back to back on the bed while he thought for several minutes about what to do next. “He decided he needed to kill them and told me he said, ‘God forgive me,’ and then went to the kitchen to get Pepsi bottles. He thought it would be less painful if he knocked them out first.”
On cross-examination Mack Dollinger had stuck with his strategy of portraying Margie Delaney as a drug addict who was trying to help her husband get out of a murder rap.
“Would you lie for your husband?” the defense attorney asked.
“Yes,” Margie replied, “but I’m not lying now.”
As the tiny woman climbed down from the witness stand, she looked at Mel Glass, who nodded solemnly. He was recalling that evening in October 1964 when she told him her story. He knew at that moment that he was hearing the truth.
As he’d told Paddy Lappin and Thomas Cavanaugh outside his office in the hallway that night, he knew it was the truth because the details of what she said matched the evidence. There were some important details that were not memorialized in any police reports, including the DD5s.
“We know that both women were struck with Pepsi bottles,” he’d said, “and that Janice’s skull was fractured, but Emily’s was not. And according to the medical examiner’s report, Emily had her throat cut on the bed—the blood on the mattress was type A, the same as Emily’s. Most of the blood on the floor was type O. Janice had type O blood. The ME also noted that Janice was stabbed five or six times in and around her heart. Only the real killer could have told her that—only the real killer could have known. And nowhere in the file—not in one of the more than a thousand police reports—will you find mention that the bedroom had an awful odor.”