CHAPTER 31
INNOCENT ARMOR
Monday morning, August 13, dawned with the threat of breaking heat records. In Judge Coen’s courtroom, the prosecution formally rested its case. Now the defense would call witnesses for the purpose of persuading jurors that John Racz did not murder his wife.
Due to severe illness, Detective Sally Fynan had not been expected to testify, but she had recently recovered enough to show up in court.
At the defense table, Darryl Mounger did not appear to be very well himself, and Philip Israels stood to question the witness. Now retired, Fynan recalled being assigned to the missing person case of Ann Racz at the beginning of May 1991, with her supervisor, Sergeant John View.
Israels began with the events of April 22, 1991, establishing through the witness that Joann had asked for something to eat, and that when Katelin arrived home from a Brownie meeting, she recalled her father being there. Pastor Thorp, she stated, had never said anything about John Racz threatening or abusing Ann, nor had he mentioned anything to her about seeing scratches on Racz. Fynan disclosed that Emi Ryan, when interviewed, had said she didn’t know if John had been physically abusive.
With the prosecution now in the role of conducting cross-examination, Fynan spoke of her first conversation, by telephone, with John Racz, about two weeks after Ann vanished. “I certainly remember it well because it was a very odd conversation. He was almost jovial. He did not appear to be worried. He went on about how she called, they exchanged money. She called two or three times after April twenty-second. It was just the strangest conversation I ever had with anybody.”
Another inconsistency in Racz’s stories came from Fynan. She recalled him saying that when Ann made the collect call on April 26, she did it “as she was taking a shuttle” to LAX “from the Flyaway lot.”
To clarify it, the prosecutor asked, “Is it your understanding that the defendant was telling you that she was saying to him on the twenty-sixth, ‘I will be taking a shuttle to the airport’ and that when the call was placed, she was not at LAX at the time?”
“Oh, absolutely. She was at the Flyaway.” Fynan had recorded it in her notes.
Taking the witness again, Israels wanted to know why she might have expected the defendant to be worried about his wife if he knew that she had filed for divorce and believed that she had gone on a trip to think things over. Fynan said she didn’t accept that he believed Ann had gone on a trip.
Additional contentious questions and objections took up the rest of the morning.
At the lunch break, a journalist left the gallery and walked downtown to buy some film. When he returned, he rode up in the elevator with John Racz and a defense investigator, who asked the writer if he was a doctor—a witness the defense expected. Replying in the negative, the writer chatted briefly and gave each of the men a business card.
After a bailiff called order in the court, Judge Coen announced that Fynan’s testimony would be interrupted temporarily to make way for another witness. A diminutive man with a mustache, glasses, and wearing a blazer, despite the heat, came forward. Dr. Edwin C. Krupp said, “I’m an astronomer and director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.” Classic movie buffs, especially Joji Yoshiyama, would probably recall scenes filmed at that observatory for the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause, starring James Dean.
Dr. Krupp told Darryl Mounger that he had researched, at the defense’s request, what time darkness had set in on April 22, 1991. Speaking about “evening civil twilight” as the time the “disk of the sun is six degrees below the ideal flat horizon,” Dr. Krupp said, “The time of sunset [on that date] was seven thirty-one P.M., and the end of evening civil twilight, which would mark darkness, was seven fifty-seven P.M.”
“What time would it actually be dark, when that evening glow is gone?”
“Astronomers calculate darkness for any given night at the end of evening astronomical twilight. That corresponds to the period when the sun is eighteen degrees below the ideal flat horizon.” On the date in question, in Valencia, “that time was nine oh-one P.M.”
Who would have known?
Apparently, the defense hoped to erase the impact of testimony from Kristin Best. In telephone conversations with Joann, during the wait for John Racz to return home that evening, she had heard Joann say it was dark when her father came in.
John Lewin apparently didn’t care to dispute the testimony. To observers, it appeared to verify that if Racz had left his house at four o’clock, and returned after seven-thirty, in the darkness, he had plenty of time to carry out the crime. Instead, Lewin wanted to know how much Dr. Krupp charged for his expert testimony. The witness said, “Four hundred dollars per hour.”
With that, Sally Fynan returned, perhaps wondering why her testimony would earn zero dollars.
Israels took Fynan back to the statement she cited from Racz in which he said the collect call from Ann came from the Flyaway. He made no dent in it.
Taking another tack, Israels asked if Fynan recalled hearing a statement from any of the three children about John telling them how long he had been gone on the trip to McDonald’s. She didn’t. Israels returned to what seemed to be his favorite topic, inquiring how many of the people she interviewed knew that Ann was having an affair. At sidebar Judge Coen ruled the question was cumulative, and the waste of time outweighed the probative value.
In rapid fire, the defender cited a number of things Fynan had never found: a crime scene, a murder weapon, physical evidence of a crime, scientific evidence of a crime, witness to a crime, an answering machine at the Fortuna home, or scratches on Racz. She had to agree with all of them.
Looking triumphant, Israels sat down.
Louis Danoff, by now familiar to court watchers, strode to the stand once more. Mounger, perhaps a little friskier from the headway his co-counsel had made, asked, “Am I going to call you Detective, Mister, or Uncle Louie?”
“Whatever you want,” Danoff said, grunting.
Suggesting that the investigators had been primarily interested in building a time frame that would give Racz the window of opportunity to kill Ann, the defender asked about some things the investigators did not do. Stoic and literal, Danoff said they were simply collecting information at that point.
With agreement from the detective that he had participated in hundreds of murder investigations, Mounger wanted to know how many of the victims had been killed by police choke holds. His inquiry created a grim picture in the minds of observers, and possibly jurors. The defendant had been trained in that technique of restraint. Had he used it on Ann to squeeze the very life out of her? Mounger asked a series of questions regarding details of how it is applied, leaving a few spectators to wonder why.
Seemingly satisfied, Mounger leaped on the issue of the answering machine, hammering at the idea that no one had decisively confirmed its existence in John Racz’s home.
He ended the session with a list of things detectives did not find: Ann’s purse, telephone book, glasses, and jewelry, including two pendants she often wore on gold chains, one a sheriff’s star and the other a sapphire.
Louis Danoff finally completed his duties of sixteen years on the Ann Racz case. He stepped down, but he would be there for the grand finale.
At the afternoon break, the journalist sat scribbling notes, and felt someone touch his shoulder. John Racz stood there, extending his hand. The two men shook hands, then parted, leaving the journalist scratching his head in puzzlement.
Two of John Racz’s offspring had testified in the prosecution’s case-in-chief, but the third, Katelin, had been conspicuously left out. Philip Israels called her to the stand to be questioned for the defense.
Witnesses are often asked right away about their professions, but Israels skipped that part for Katelin. Insiders knew she had dabbled at several jobs. For a while, she had worked in a pet-grooming shop, and more recently had tried the exotic nightclub entertainment industry. Whispered conversations shared rumors that she now lived with her father, who had paid her to resign from her work and accompany him to court every day.
Slim and attractive, with long, dark hair and brown eyes, Katelin, barely audible, took the oath to tell the whole truth, then demurely seated herself. Israels began by reminding her that she had made statements in 1991 as a child, and more recently to the grand jury.
Taking her back to April 22,1991, Israels tried to deal with conflicts in those statements, but he struggled against a dozen sustained objections. He found a foothold by asking Katelin if she had ever had conversations with her sister about what had happened in 1991. It surprised observers to hear her say no, they never talked about it.
“Do you remember having an answering machine back in 1991 at the Fortuna address?”
“No.” She thought they hadn’t installed one until 1997.
“Does your father sometimes get scratches from gardening?”
“Yes.”
Katelin said she could not remember whether or not her father had been at the house when she arrived on April 22, 1991. Israels turned her over to the prosecution.
John Lewin asked if she considered herself unbiased. Katelin said she did, but divulged being very close to her dad. Asked where she currently resided, she said “Newhall” and claimed she hadn’t lived with her father for about five years. “Does your dad provide you with any financial support?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Does your dad give you money still?”
“No.”
“What is the last time your dad gave you money?”
Contradicting her last answer, she said, “He gave me a check last month. It was [for] fifteen hundred dollars.” Katelin denied any other monetary gifts since she had left home.
“Did you ask him for any money last month?”
“He compensated me, because I quit my job so I could be here.” She agreed that John Racz basically was paying her to be in court, and she had not missed any days. Still, she regarded herself as unbiased.
Memories of her mother, said Katelin, came in fragments. “I remember specific things, that’s all.” But the witness affirmed traits mentioned by Lewin, such as dedicated, loving, affectionate, meticulous, involved in school activities, helpful with homework, and communicative with her kids. “She was a soccer mom too.”
“Did she make a big deal out of your birthdays and holidays?”
“I don’t remember.” Lewin reminded Katelin that in testimony to the grand jury nine months ago, she stated that Ann did make a big deal out of birthdays. But now she answered, “I don’t remember ever having a big birthday bash. It would be just the family, and that’s it.”
“Can you imagine your mom taking an extended vacation and not saying good-bye?”
“I don’t know.” To another similar question about the possibility that her mother had abandoned her, Katelin answered that it could have happened. Prodded a little more, though, she reverted to “I don’t know.”
Apparently weary of the topic, or perhaps frustrated with the vague answers, Lewin moved on to Katelin’s father, only to hear a repetitious shield of “I don’t remember.” Her previous testimony seemed to have changed or fled her mind. She rationalized the differences by saying she had, at the grand jury, “felt obligated to fit the pieces in with what I didn’t know.” Those pieces, Katelin claimed, came from conversations with relatives. So, to her, the truth had taken on a new meaning. Giving the witness an opportunity to account for her evasiveness, Lewin asked, “Has anything happened to you physically in terms of a significant head trauma or anything like that between the grand jury and your testimony today?”
Using her own interpretation of head trauma, Katelin replied, “Yes. I have read the letters that my mom [wrote] to Bob Russell.” “Darryl” had given them to her.
Juror Barbara Kaplan could be seen rapidly writing in her notebook. The letters, she thought, had wreaked their havoc.
For Lewin, the young woman presented a formidable challenge. She spoke in a soft, childlike voice, but she wrapped herself in armor more impenetrable than steel. Often requiring him to repeat his questions, and chanting, “I don’t know,” Katelin managed to avoid any statement damaging to her father. Yet, asked if that was her intent, she denied it.
The prosecutor inquired, “Do you view yourself as part of your father’s defense team?”
With all the demure innocence she could muster, Katelin said she was nothing more than “a witness.”
Regarding Ann’s devotion to the children, Katelin gave a more definitive comment. “When my mom was writing the letters to Robert Russell, when did she have time to do that if she was so dedicated? How could she have time to write over one hundred letters in a year?”
“Does that mean she didn’t love you?”
“It means she wasn’t honest and she could have been into other things that she wasn’t honest about either.”
Katelin danced away from most of Lewin’s question with the agility of an Olympic ice-skater, but she did say that if her father had committed the murder, he should be found guilty.
This youngest offspring of Ann and John Racz’s engendered the same compassion that had been felt for Glenn and Joann. Katelin had endured unimaginable anguish in losing her mother, and seeing her father charged with killing her. Spectators could see through the veneer of her rationalizations and evasions. The scars would no doubt remain with her forever.
She stepped down at last, and gave her father a weak smile.
The next witness, a female friend of the defendant, had moved into a home on Fortuna Drive in 1997. She had read a news report describing the testimony of another neighbor, Thomas Deardorff, and contacted the defense team to volunteer her opinion that he had not been truthful. On the stand, under Israels’s questioning, the woman said she walked her dog daily, and had discovered that, while standing in front of the home Deardorff had occupied in 1991, it would be impossible to see anything going on at the Racz residence. Curvature of the street would prevent it. So she wanted to contradict Deardorff’s comments about seeing the moving van, and about John Racz leaving to follow Ann on that fateful day.
Cross-examination resulted in her admission to being a “very close” friend of Racz’s, and she did not believe that he murdered his wife. The witness also did not know whether trees or shrubs currently on the street had existed in 1991, nor did she know where Mr. Deardorff had stood when he made his observations. Jurors would have to decide if her contribution carried any weight.
Another brief defense witness took the oath from her wheelchair, due to a broken ankle, and remained in it to testify. Ann Racz, she said, had written newsletters for a homeowners’ association managed by the witness. She told Israels about a newspaper article telling of Ann’s disappearance on April 22, 1991. “I thought that was not possible because I remember seeing her at the intersection of Wiley and Lyons after that date.”
Muffled whispers rippled through the gallery.
The witness believed the sighting had occurred on April 25. She had been driving her car, making a left, late at that intersection, and spotted Ann coming from the opposite direction, making a right turn. They had acknowledged each other. The woman made a police report one month later after seeing the news article.
On cross-examination, she could not identify Ann’s white minivan from a photograph, but was “eighty percent certain” that she had recognized Ann Racz. And her certainty of the date stood at about 80 percent. In the police report, she had expressed a possibility of children being in Ann’s car and had said the event “could have been six weeks ago, I’m not sure.” That would have made the sighting well before April 22.
Philip Israels told Judge Coen that he had only one more witness, but the person couldn’t come to court until the next day, Wednesday. To save time, Coen allowed the prosecution to put on the first of only two rebuttal witnesses, even though the defense hadn’t yet officially rested its case.
Frank Salerno rose to take his final turn at bat. Beth Silverman asked him if, on May 29, 1991, he had interviewed the woman who had just finished testifying. Salerno said yes, and he had taken notes of it. “Eventually she gave me a date of April twenty-fifth, but she wasn’t certain.” The woman had related it to a day she left early from work. “She went on to say it might have been as long as six weeks before our conversation.” She had also expressed certainty about seeing kids in the car.
Through Salerno, Beth Silverman struck another blow at the woman’s story. Ann’s car had been parked in the Flyaway lot on April 25, 1991, as verified by a yellow parking receipt found inside it. She could not have been driving it at the intersection of Wiley and Lyons. If that witness had truly seen Ann, it must have been six weeks before her report, or approximately April 17, the day before she moved to Peachland.
Frank Salerno left the witness chair, having completed his last official act on a case he had inherited more than sixteen years ago.
Detective Cheryl Comstock took the oath and faced Beth Silverman. A veteran with three decades of police experience, she had partnered with Sergeant Dee Scott as the most recent sleuths on the Ann Racz case. Silverman questioned her about their conversations with Katelin, beginning on June 9, 2006. Comstock declared that Katelin’s demeanor had been “dramatically” different from how she behaved while testifying. At that time, Katelin had been friendly, but from the opening day of the trial, she had been “distant” and defensive, barely acknowledging Comstock’s “hellos to her.”
In addition, said the witness, Katelin’s accounts of her mother had definitely changed. Initially she “absolutely did not believe her mother had abandoned her.”
Did you ask her why she changed beliefs?
“She told me that she had several meetings with her father’s attorney, Mr. Mounger, which took place at his home, and that . . . Mr. Mounger had, in fact, told her that her mother had abandoned them.”
In a May 7, 2007, interview with Katelin, said Comstock, “there was a lot of defiance and restiveness in trying to draw out information from her. Completely different from my first contact with her.” The same thing had happened with Glenn Racz.
Katelin’s testimony had included cynical comments about her mother’s devotion. “She told us that she remembered her mother to be devoted to not only her, but Joann too,” Comstock said.
“Did she tell you she had numerous conversations with her father about the case?”
“Yes.”
Beth inquired about one of the early, friendly interviews. “Did you ask her if the idea that her mother had abandoned her was sad for her to think about?”
“I did. And she responded, ‘Yes, but it’s sadder to think that my father slaughtered my mother.’”
Sounding tense, defender Israels cross-examined. “Were you aware that in 1991, she said that when she got home from the Brownies meeting, her father was there with Glenn and Joann?”
Comstock said she wasn’t there at the time, but she had read the documentation.
“Okay,” said Israels, and made a quantum leap in subject matter. “You describe yourself as a fact finder. Did you ever go to the L.A. airport to make a determination on whether or not there were surveillance cameras there in 1991?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
Israels also wanted to know if Comstock had gone to Katelin’s school to check records of what time she got out on April 22, 1991. And Glenn’s school. And Joann’s school.
Back to Katelin, he asked if Comstock had ever let her read 109 letters in reference to this case. “No,” she replied, “I would never have done that, sir.”
Israels also seized the opportunity to inquire if a crime scene, murder weapon, any physical evidence, scientific evidence, or witnesses to a crime had ever been discovered.
“No, sir.”
When Silverman took over again, she asked, “Detective, the fact that you never found a crime scene, does that indicate to you no homicide took place?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Does that indicate that Ann Racz is still alive?” Silverman ran through each of the hurdles erected by the defender. Comstock kicked at all of them.
Regarding the letters, Comstock expressed the same thing that juror Barbara Kaplan would later say. “Those were personal letters meant for those individuals and no one else’s eyes.”
A slip of paper had been discovered in the condo on which Ann had printed several area code (800) numbers of airlines, and the defenders had hinted it could relate to Ann’s plans to take a trip in April 1991. Silverman asked Comstock to read a portion of Ann’s letter to Russell, dated July 3, 1990. It suggested that Ann had prepared her list, then tried to find cheap airfare to visit Russell.
At the end of Detective Comstock’s testimony, observers looked toward the defense table. Would John Racz get up and tell what happened in his own words? It didn’t happen. He chose to remain mute.
That left only one witness to be heard from, on the next day.
The morning of Wednesday, August 15, brought more record temperatures outside, making Judge Coen’s courtroom a welcome, air-conditioned respite. The case’s final witness seated himself.
Stephen Yee had spent eighteen years as a manager at Los Angeles International Airport, including 1991. Philip Israels asked him if surveillance cameras had been in place at that time. Yes, said Yee. In the terminals’ “holding areas, right before you get to the airplane takeoff areas. They were for skyjacking, not terrorism.” Tapes had been kept on record for six months, then burned, unless a law enforcement agency asked to borrow them. Other cameras screened license plate numbers of vehicles leaving the central parking area.
Israels asked the witness, if the sheriff’s office had called to request use of those videos, “would you have cooperated with law enforcement?”
“Yes.”
If observers expected dazzling fireworks as a climax to the defense’s case, they saw something more like a wet firecracker that fizzled and never exploded. Israels turned the witness over to Beth Silverman.
She said, “We don’t have any cross, Your Honor.”
Israels announced, “The defense rests.”
“That’s it. It’s over,” Judge Coen informed the jury. He ordered them to return on the following day to hear the lawyers deliver arguments, summarizing their cases.
This phase is eagerly anticipated by journalists and veteran court observers. It ties up all the loose strings. It’s like Charlie Chan calling everyone into a drawing room and telling how he solved the case. The opening statements predict how the puzzle pieces should be assembled, while the final arguments present the final picture with all interlocking pieces in place.
Unless some of the pieces are missing!