CHAPTER 44

DESPITE THE OUT-OF-COURT GOINGS ON, THERE WAS STILL A MURDER trial underway.

Detective Sergeant Dominick DiPaolo was determined to focus his attention on the trial, rather than the extracurricular activities in the local press. Nearly seven years after the killing, the culminating trial in the seemingly endless Frank “Bolo” Dovishaw murder investigation was finally underway and winding down, much to DiPaolo’s satisfaction.

The shooter – Robert Dorler of Medina, Ohio, and the middleman, Erie’s Caesar Montevecchio, had already fallen. Now, in DiPaolo’s mind, there was only one person remaining to fall, the man on trial for plotting the hit, Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone. The Erie cop had given the investigation his best shot – but now it was out of his hands. It was a helpless feeling, but DiPaolo understood how the system worked, and he knew he would live with the outcome, no matter what it turned out to be.

State prosecutor M.L. Ebert, representing the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, began calling his final witnesses on December 6, 1989, in an attempt to nail down the theory advanced all along that Niggsy Arnone had orchestrated the 1983 killing to get into Dovishaw’s bank safe deposit boxes.

With the alleged assistance of a relative employed at the bank, an allegation maintained by the prosecution throughout the trial, authorities claimed Arnone had helped himself to more than $300,000 in Bolo’s illegally gained gambling loot.

On the other hand, Arnone, 50, steadfastly maintained his innocence.

Now the prosecution needed to back up its contention that Dovishaw, one of Erie’s most notorious bookies, was killed out of greed for his ill-gotten loot. Prosecutor Ebert called to the stand Augustine Matson, a former special agent with the United States Internal Revenue Service. Matson, who was now in business for himself as a Certified Public Accountant, testified he was hired by investigators and prosecutors in January 1988 to examine Arnone’s tax, business and banking records, now a part of the official trial transcripts.

“We couldn’t find enough sources to explain funds going into those accounts,” Matson said. The gist of the former IRS agent’s testimony was that after examining Arnone’s financial records he could not explain the presence of some $140,000 in deposited funds from 1983 through 1986. Stated differently, there was more than $140,000 in Arnone’s accounts over and above the money that had been available to him during the time period in question. Jury members appeared amazed.

Dragging out a large chart to make the figures more understandable for the jury, Matson testified that Arnone had deposited amounts of money that were over and above the money that was available to him in each of the four years from 1983 to 1986.

“In 1982, I found, there was enough sources of money to explain what was in the account,” the Certified Public Accountant said. “But in the years 1983 through 1986, I didn’t have enough known sources to explain what was in his account.”

Lead Defense Attorney Joseph Santaguida, however, began his cross-examination of the witness by attempting to discredit several of the accountant’s financial assertions. Santaguida attempted to show the jury Matson had never been given complete figures representing Arnone’s finances during the years in question. Plus, the witness never interviewed or spoke with Arnone or Arnone’s accountant.

“In effect, you were trying to put together a puzzle without all the pieces?” Attorney Santaguida asked Matson.

Matson denied that assumption. Instead, Matson said, he was in possession of all of Arnone’s financial information for the years 1983 and 1984, although he also acknowledged some of the information for the two remaining years was incomplete.

Santaguida scored jury points several times when he got Matson to acknowledge he didn’t interview Arnone or his accountant, nor did he speak with Arnone’s wife. When Santaguida asked whether interviewing both Arnone and his accountant should have been standard operating procedure in such investigations, Matson indicated that he believed those interviews were not called for.

It was then that Santaguida brought forth material that Matson had used himself in teaching classes on the topic. The Matson teaching documents introduced by Santaguida called for such analysis of financial records to include at least interviews with the subjects of the investigation.

“Did you do that?” the lawyer asked, referring to interviews with either Arnone or Arnone’s accountant.

“No sir,” Matson responded.

Now Santaguida wanted Matson to tell him and the jury about various methods accountants use so they can find different deposits from “unknown sources.” He used the example of a gambler depositing $1,000 into a bank account, then withdrawing it, then again depositing $1,000 into the same account. Although the records would show $2,000 in deposits, as his example went, just the same $1,000 was involved.

Matson acknowledged such an instance was possible, but said it did not fit the pattern of Arnone’s regular deposits of varied amounts from $100 to $500. Matson was a prosecution witness. It wasn’t his job to help Santaguida defend Arnone. So it wasn’t all that unusual that there would be some push back during cross-examination testimony. Using Santaguida’s example of a gambler withdrawing and re-depositing funds, Matson explained Arnone wouldn’t have needed to take cash from his account for gambling because cash was easily available to him at his business.

Santaguida also attempted to show that some income could have been from repayments of loans Arnone had made. But again Matson said the frequent small deposits over a lengthy period tended to indicate otherwise.

Asking Matson whether deposited money could have come from increased profits from Arnone’s importing business, Matson again acknowledged that was possible.

But he also said that Arnone’s business tax records had showed no dramatic increases in profits during the years involved.

Later testifying for the defense was Joseph Bressan, Niggsy Arnone’s accountant.

After Santaguida produced for Bressan several instances of business payments Arnone had made from his personal bank account, Bressan said such payments were accounted for at the end of the year while determining business earnings and expenses.

Whether or not the testimony of the financial experts hurt or helped either side was up to interpretation, depending on which side of the courtroom one was sitting. For DiPaolo, it wasn’t time to push the panic button. But he was forced to admit that Santaguida was proving to be a much more formidable courtroom opponent that the Erie cop was accustomed to facing.

The next prosecution witness was getting to be no stranger at the Erie County Courthouse. Less than a month earlier, PennBank loan officer Diane DiRenzio-Amendola had testified in the trial of Robert Dorler, helping to convict the triggerman in the Dovishaw murder.

Now, as DiRenzio-Amendola again found herself a witness for the prosecution she testified that the last time she had seen the inside of the largest of the two safe-deposit boxes Dovishaw rented at her bank branch, it held “lots of money, papers and jewelry.” During her earlier testimony, she had told the Robert Dorler trial jury that she saw the box stuffed with $50 and $100 bills, perhaps as much as $300,000.

DiRenzio-Amendola had known Frank Dovishaw only as a customer. But occasionally, she had testified, she had helped him with access to the bank vault and one of his boxes there. She had last helped Dovishaw on December 17, 1982, she told the jury. At that time, she assisted him in getting into the larger of the two safe deposit boxes. Apparently because she had acted in a friendly way toward the customer Dovishaw, she testified, he had allowed her to view the contents of his safe-deposit box.

“It was about halfway filled and about three quarters of the way to the top,” she said during that earlier testimony.

When DiPaolo drilled open the box after Bolo’s untimely demise, he found only about $18,000 in cash. Hardly the amount anyone would expect to find as the sacred stash of Erie’s leading sports-betting figure.

Now, during the Niggsy Arnone trial, Ebert asked the witness if, at the request of the prosecution, she had filled a like-sized box as Dovishaw’s with 50s and 100s.

Acknowledging she had done so, she told the jury that it took $300,000 in the test box. Her testimony appeared to have the same incredulous impact on the Anthony Arnone jury as it did on the Dorler panel. It would be easy for most on the panel to understand the motivation for a killing that came with a 300 grand payday, DiPaolo hopefully thought to himself.

DiRenzio-Amendola also told the Arnone jury, just as she had done before the Dorler jury, that she had processed a loan application for Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone on January 4, 1983, the day after Bolo Dovishaw’s murder. And again she testified to having seen Arnone enter the bank vault, where the safe-deposit boxes are stored, on that day. Arnone had been alone as he entered the vault area, DiRenzio-Amendola told the jury members. Arnone also had a deposit box at the bank that he had rented the previous May.

In her previous testimony, DiRenzio-Amendola had explained that generally it takes two – the holder of the box and a bank employee, each with a key – to open safe-deposit boxes. During that previous testimony, referring to Arnone entering the vault area alone, Ebert had asked the witness, “You didn’t see anyone go in with him (Arnone)?”

“No,” DiRenzio-Amendola had replied.

Further painting a vivid portrait of Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone as a heavy bettor, and perhaps even a gambler in deep debt, the prosecution called an eye-witness to Arnone’s betting habits. Daniel Berlin, a public school math teacher who worked his summers selling pari-mutuel tickets at Erie’s Commodore Downs Racetrack from 1973 to 1982, was quick to identify Arnone to the jury as a “regular” at the track.

When asked if he could identify Arnone by sight – given it was seven years since he worked at the track – Berlin slowly visually examined those seated around the defense table, carefully checking out each man there. Then, Arnone raised his hand to identify himself. Berlin said he recognized Arnone by sight years earlier because his visits to the racetrack appeared to be almost every night. And usually he was in the company of Caesar Montevecchio.

“Most every race he’d bet between $100 and $200,” Berlin said. “Typically, not always.” Berlin explained that 10 races were run each night, and the season during some years lasted 100 days.

When defense lawyer Santaguida asked Berlin if there was something wrong with visiting the racetrack or betting, Berlin said he had no such beliefs. Berlin also testified he had no idea how often Arnone won in his betting because the winner windows were situated apart from the selling windows where Berlin had worked.

Based on the numbers provided by Berlin, Arnone could have bet anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000 a season.

The jury was doing the math. Impressive.

Seemingly saving its best shot for last, as if to add an exclamation point to the courtroom proceedings, the prosecution summoned one more time as its primary police witness, Detective Sergeant Dominick DiPaolo.

DiPaolo had been through this drill before. Many times. And he was eager to get this trial, the entire Bolo Dovishaw murder investigation, behind him. But first, he would be sworn in a last time, promise to tell the truth, and then relate an account all too familiar to him for the nearly seven long years of the Dovishaw investigation. Since DiPaolo was chief investigator, it would be important for Santaguida to try to poke as many holes in this cops’ testimony as possible. It was a defense lawyer’s obligation, DiPaolo well knew.

From the start, Santaguida repeatedly interrupted DiPaolo’s testimony, objecting, according to one published report, some 11 times during the first hour. But DiPaolo was steady and stayed on message as he got his story out. The police investigator told jurors that searches of Bolo Dovishaw’s home after the murder turned up about $600 in cash in a jacket pocket. The jacket had been draped over a chair near the front door. Police found another $600 inside a bank envelope in a bookcase in the home, DiPaolo said.

Later searches of Dovishaw’s Caddy, when it was found two days after the murder in the parking lot of an Interstate 90 hotel, turned up some $5,200 in cash that had been hidden in the spare tire well under the trunk carpeting. More cash and even checks were found hidden beneath the car’s dashboard. One of the checks, DiPaolo testified, was made out to defendant Anthony Arnone. Arnone, DiPaolo said, admitted turning the check over to Dovishaw before Bolo’s murder. Arnone did not say why he gave the check to Dovishaw. The check was dated January 6, 1982, but Arnone told him the check should have been dated January 6, 1983, explaining it was meant to be held and cashed three days after Dovishaw died.

In further testimony, DiPaolo patiently, dutifully told the jury members of how investigators found nearly identical sums of money amounting to $18,000 in each of Frank Dovishaw’s bank safe-deposit boxes at the PennBank’s Millcreek Township branch office. His testimony jived with the theory advanced by the prosecution that larger amounts of money were removed from the boxes, while some sizeable sums were then left behind to confuse officers.

Then the prosecutor shifted gears. “During the course of your investigation, did you ever find the murder weapon?” M.L. Ebert asked the officer.

“No, sir,” DiPaolo said. DiPaolo said that investigators, assisted by divers, thoroughly searched the bottom of Meander Lake near Youngstown, Ohio, for the murder weapon. “There were 254 weapons recovered,” the detective said. “But not ours.”

The answer drew nervous laughter from some of the spectators who understood the significance of the large number of lethal weapons found in the lake beneath a bridge not far from a seat of organized crime. The weapons had been recovered from the lake during investigations between 1980 and the late-1987 search involving Dovishaw’s murder. But the latest search struck out in terms of finding the murder weapon, DiPaolo said.

The cop’s investigation of Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone as part of the Dovishaw murder probe, he testified, began in July 1987 when Caesar Montevecchio agreed to cooperate and then fingered his longtime friend. DiPaolo said that when he took Montevecchio’s official statement implicating Arnone in the crime, tough guy Caesar Montevecchio wept.

During his cross-examination, Santaguida asked whether DiPaolo instructed Montevecchio to telephone Arnone over a monitored telephone line in an attempt to record incriminating information from the defendant.

DiPaolo said he had not.

Santaguida managed to work into his cross examination information that police had successfully used similar investigatory methods when “Fat Sam” Esper was wired with a recording device to lure Montevecchio into making incriminating statements against himself. But DiPaolo explained that instance involved a “body wire” Esper wore when he was with Montevecchio. Montevecchio never wore a wire, nor was he asked to.

The prosecution finally rested its case following DiPaolo’s six hours of testimony over two days. Now it would be Santaguida’s turn.

DiPaolo, for all his confidence in what he believed to be a solid case, still felt uneasy, queasy, as the defense stepped up to the plate. As most of his gut feelings went, this one would also prove to be accurate.