The Patriarcas, Raymond L. S. Senior and Junior, might as well have honorary seats in the courtroom, at least at the start of the trial.
First the entire jury visits the crooks’ hideout at 5 Golf Avenue, East Providence, and then the scene of the crime at 101 Cranston Street, Providence. Upon returning they are removed from the courtroom before anyone can testify so that Brower and Cicilline can press two issues they consider primary.
One is the presence of the armed and uniformed troopers, which Brower says turns the proceedings into an armed camp. “What would stop these defendants from taking a hostage if no police were in the room?” DeRobbio asks.
The other is the use in testimony of the Patriarca family name, on the grounds that its reputation, according to Cicilline, would be prejudicial—this, despite the fact that the jurors are sequestered for the entire trial.
Giannini affirms his stand on the troopers’ presence, saying he consulted State Police Superintendent Stone, who cited departmental policy and union regulations on the issue. What’s more, Giannini says, in a pretrial poll of fifty-four prospective jurors, none said they would feel influenced by a uniformed presence during court proceedings.
Cicilline gains traction with the issue of the Patriarca name, however. After privately previewing Deuce’s testimony, Giannini sustains Cicilline’s objection on the grounds that using Patriarca’s name would lend unwarranted credibility to hearsay. All parties agree that if references must be made, they will be in the form of “John Doe Sr.,” as in, “Who collected the silver bullion?” and “John Doe Jr.,” as in, “Who helped John Ouimette plan the heist?”
The jury hears testimony from a number of people who lost the contents of their safe deposit boxes. Some have filed very specific claims with the court-appointed receiver; more lost items will never be specifically identified other than, for example, “twenty-five gold pesos” or “large bag of silver quarters.”
Some of the people who testify obviously paid close attention in civics class and are intimately familiar with their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent so as to avoid self-incrimination. Frank “Babe” Kowal, Jerome “The Bingo Man” Geller, and Matthew Levine, for example—all of whom are currently wrangling with the Internal Revenue Service—at one point or another in testimony take solace in the Bill of Rights.
Seven days into the trial, one of the employee hostages, fur finisher Barbara Oliva, takes the stand. Brower takes her to task because she told police shortly after the heist that she didn’t see the face of any of the robbers but then later identified two of them as the “first” and “second” men.
Oliva says she didn’t want to get involved at first because she was frightened but later changed her mind. She saw the second man when he entered the Bonded Vault office and then again when the pillowcase over her head was lifted to help her breathe. She had sketched a likeness of him for police.
“Is that man here today,” Brower asks.
“Yes,” Oliva says.
“Would you come down from the stand and identify him for us?”
Oliva walks over to where Chucky is seated, points directly at him, and says, “He was the second robber.”
The lawyers launch into what stretches out to be nearly two days of loud give-and-take and outright bickering over Oliva’s testimony, but she holds her ground.
Giannini volunteers that he has never had a witness who was able to give such descriptive and thorough accounts of what she had seen. The courtroom is hot and humid. The air in the packed room is stifling. Two old air conditioners cool the room before each session, but they have to be turned off when the trial resumes because they are too loud. They are turned on intermittently during proceedings so that lawyers’ conversations at the bench can’t be overheard.
Brower asks Oliva during her third day of testimony to don the pillowcase she had worn as a hostage, and she is visibly shaken.
“Please don’t make me put on the pillowcase,” she says, bursting into tears. Giannini recesses the trial for lunch, and Oliva returns to the stand directly after, still visibly upset.
Brower asks for a recess.
“I had rather get this over with,” she says.
Brower persists.
Giannini relents.
Recess drags on through the hottest part of the day. When the jury is seated again at 2:20 p.m., the room goes silent for a couple of minutes.
“Where’s our witness, Mr. DeRobbio?” Giannini asks.
“She is on her way up,” the prosecutor says.
Moments later, Oliva returns to the stand and Brower’s questions turn to the sketches she drew. He asks Chucky to stand up.
“Does his chin fit the image of the man you drew a sketch of?” he asks.
“Yes,” Oliva says, “that is the man.”
Brower winces and asks that the answer be stricken as not responsive.
Giannini demurs.
“Do you see a dimple in Mr. Flynn’s chin?” Brower snaps. “Why didn’t you draw in the dimple in the sketch you drew of the man you say was the second man?”
Oliva says she doesn’t know.
Brower says he is finished with Oliva for now.
It was Chucky who told her during the robbery not to look at him or he would “blow her fucking head off.”
She leaves the witness stand shaken, sweat glistening on her brow but with her chin slightly raised, resolute, as if to say, “Take that, you son of a bitch.”