A Death in Canaan (40 page)

From the phone booth on the stairway landing, I called Jean Beligni, who was waiting it out at home. She said that the night before, on the eleven o'clock news, she'd heard the newscaster begin, “A jury today reached a guilty verdict …” and had felt so faint she had to put her head in her lap. A friend who was with her went into the bathroom and threw up. As it turned out, the item was about the Yablonski murders, and the newscaster went on to say that, closer to home, in the Peter Reilly case, the jury has not reached a verdict.

“I am absolutely going bananas,” Jean said. “I just can't understand it. There's no weapon! There's no blood! And what about the other fingerprint? But Paul said to me, after he heard John Bianchi's summation, that for the first time during the trial, he was worried and thought it might go the wrong way.”

I was trying to read
Yankee
magazine when the word spread in midafternoon that the judge had asked the jury be brought out. Charles had been expecting this; he took a typed piece of paper from his notepad and followed along as the judge read the jurors a modified version of the famous “Chip Smith” charge, a little lecture that was considered by some lawyers to be both necessary and discreetly persuasive, by others to be nothing less than judicial arm-twisting.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen,” the judge said, smiling a little wearily at them, “you have been deliberating for some time in this case. I have no criticism to make of the length of time you have been in conference … however, I feel it is my duty to give you whatever aid I can in arriving at a verdict, if you are having a problem.

“Although the verdict to which each juror agrees must, of course, be his own conclusion and not a mere acquiescence in the conclusions of his fellows, and although each juror has the right and duty to retain his own opinion, yet, in order to bring twelve minds to a unanimous result, each juror should examine with candor the questions submitted to them, with due regard and deference to the opinions of each other …”

Miss Roraback protested that she had never heard the Chip Smith charge used until a jury announced it was deadlocked, which this jury had not done. But the jurors had gone back into the little room, Helen Ayre looking surprised and somewhat chagrined. Mr. Roberts was leaning over the bar rail, telling me about Chip Smith, also accused of murder, back in the 1800s, and the first use of the charge. “As a result, Chip Smith was hanged,” Mr. Roberts said dryly. The rap at the door came then, twenty-six minutes after the jury had gone to their room. It was a loud rap. It was loud as thunder.

The jury filed back into their places. Most of them looked at the judge, although Gary Lewis looked right at Peter, and Helen Ayre looked straight ahead of her, at some point on the opposite wall. When the jury came out, she had noticed Peter cross his fingers, and after that she didn't look at him again. Not even when the jury foreman, Edward Ives, gave the verdict: guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. Not even when the clerk, at Miss Roraback's request, polled the jury, in the formal, rather frightening language of the law: “Helen Ayre, look upon the accused. What say you, is he guilty or not guilty of the crime with which he stands accused?” “Guilty,” Mrs. Ayre had said, as each juror had done. Her voice sounded low and strained. Catherine Roraback never took her eyes off Mrs. Ayre, watching her even as the jury was dismissed and filed out of the courtroom in a single, silent file, in a courtroom so hushed that the quiet itself was obtrusive.

Judge Speziale set May 14 for sentencing and said the bond would be continued. But Peter hardly seemed to hear, as he stood at the defense table, his shoulders sagging, his face ashy white, his mouth hanging open. The judge said he wanted to commend the attorneys and to give them “the thanks of the state of Connecticut, and my individual thanks.” He looked at the reporters in the first row and said he wanted to thank us, too, because he knew that CBS had wanted us to talk in defiance of the gag order, and he knew that we had declined. He said he appreciated that. “It has been a long road for all of us,” Judge Speziale said. “We've all left a little bit of ourselves here.”

He left the bench quickly then, and in a few minutes the courtroom was nearly cleared. Geoff Madow sat in the middle of the third row, his head buried in his hands. The prosecutor and his assistants went back into their offices; Miss Roraback put her hand on Peter's shoulder and said something to him, before she and Peter Herbst went back toward the judge's chambers. Marion Madow sat in the second row of the courtroom, nearly empty now, just looking at Peter, who still stood by himself at the defense table, his hand covering his mouth, staring at the floor. Bill and Marie Dickinson sat in the row behind her, watching Marion. Then Eddie Dickinson came over to Marion to give her Peter's coat. She looked at the coat, then she looked at Eddie, and then Marion burst into tears—loud, gasping sobs that caused her to bend over and cross her arms in front of her stomach. Mickey put his arms around Marion and helped her get up. “Come on,” Mickey said gently. “Come on now. Let's go home.”

I had been on my way out of the courtroom, following the other reporters, but I stopped at the door. Farn put her hand on my arm quickly, as she hurried past. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. I was staring at Peter and the Dickinsons and at Marion, and when Marion cried, like one domino toppling another, I began to cry too, in the same loud, gulping way. Mickey hurried over to me and put his arm around me. “Do you want to come home with us?” he asked, and I said yes.

Going down the courthouse steps, Murray Madow spoke loudly, not caring who heard. “Now all we have to do is find the killer,” he said angrily. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and across the street, on the green, watching people come out. A TV crew from Hartford had tried to interview the jurors, but they were escorted out of the courthouse by deputies. A woman standing in the door of the coffee shop said: “He was such an arrogant kid. He thought he could get away with it.”

John Bianchi was smiling when Roger took his picture, and he paused for a comment. “That's all it was, manslaughter,” Mr. Bianchi told Roger. “I believed that from the day it happened.” Not far behind him, Joe O'Brien approached Catherine Roraback, but she shook her head. “I haven't got a goddamn comment,” she said.

Peter Reilly came down the steps, flanked by a sheriff and two deputies, with Mickey Madow leading the way. Peter's hair was streaming in the wind, and he still had that ashen, sick look, his hands thrust into his pockets. Mickey looked bad, too. He was carrying Miss Roraback's briefcase. It was always heavy, filled with papers and bulging folders. Sometimes she had so much to bring to court that everything wouldn't fit into the case, and she had to use a tote bag or a satchel. Even a paper bag. Peter's plaid jacket had been in a paper bag—the jacket John Sochocki had mentioned, the jacket the jurors had asked about. When the police returned it to Marion Madow, along with the rest of Peter's and Barbara's things, the jacket had a red stain in front. Miss Roraback thought either it was wine, or the residue of a lab test the police had done, and twice she had brought the jacket into court, to show the jury the jacket wasn't missing. But each time she had changed her mind.

All evening, people came by to see Peter, very much as they'd done the night he got out of jail. Marion and Nan put out cold meat loaf, rice, and salad, and made pots of coffee. Marie Dickinson sat at the dinette counter, smoking. “The way I feel tonight reminds me of the weekend they took Peter,” Marie said. “I keep asking myself, ‘What happened?'”

Reporters kept calling up, but nobody was quite sure what Peter should say. Everybody remembered what had happened when he'd talked the day he got out of jail, and with the sentencing now hanging over his head, the fear remained. We called Catherine Roraback to ask her advice. “I think it's healthy for him to do it himself,” she said. “He could just say, ‘I'm innocent, and I hope someday I'll be able to prove it.'”

I didn't take many notes on what Peter said that night, or on what other people said. One reason was that I was in and out of the den, trying to get to the phone. The other reason was that I didn't feel like taking notes. I remember Peter sitting on the floor in the living room, looking up at Elaine Monty, telling her about the day. “John Bianchi came over to me afterwards and wished me good luck,” Peter said.

I remember Marion's sister Vicky. She had sometimes been at the Madows' when Jim Mulhern came by. “He used to tease me and say, ‘Aren't you afraid to live in New York City?'” Vicky recalled bitterly. “Well, I'll take my chances with the New York cops any day.”

Late that night, the phone was still busy, and I slipped out and drove over to the Belignis'. The Belignis and the Madows were not nearly as friendly as they'd been, and although Aldo had gone over to the Madows' after the verdict, Jean, who was more outspoken, had decided to stay home. Jean was the first person I'd met when I first heard about Peter Reilly, and I wanted to see her tonight. We sat in her kitchen for a while, just the two of us.

Then I got back in my car. The night was dark, without stars, and I drove for hours. I drove like a fugitive through the night, with a crackling feeling inside my head, angry and guilty. Angry at myself for not having spoken out before. I wished I had tried to attract more attention, that I'd talked on Rick Kaplan's TV news, that I'd said, “Look at this. See what is happening here.” But I hadn't wanted to miss the trial, which I enjoyed enormously; its marvelous characters with their marvelous lines, so tragic and funny, so much better than lines I could make up. I'd attended the trial as theater, a suspense drama with a happy ending, for not since the day I heard the tapes at the pretrial hearings had it occurred to me that Peter would be found guilty. At the trial, when I'd heard him say, “I'm not sure. Can you say I'm not sure?” that seemed to create plenty of doubt, and I'd written fancifully in my notes that I saw “reasonable doubt strewn over the dingy green carpet like rotting leaves.”

I was stunned, too, by the freakish nature of all this, by the sheer chance that had brought me to the courtroom that December day, by the chance that had determined that it would be Judge Armentano who would hear the tapes; Judge Wall, they said around court, would probably have thrown the confession out. It was chance, too, almost a whim, that Judge Armentano had had some of the tapes played in open court. It seemed so random, and random was frightening.

The law had never caused much stir in my life. I had served on a jury once, a ridiculous episode in a New York City Civil Court with me and eleven other unqualified people attempting to unravel a complicated insurance claim, involving holding companies, real estate, mortgages, and liens. The verdict didn't have to be unanimous, just ten out of twelve, and after a few miserable hours, enough of us voted one way or the other to make a verdict, just to get it over with. As we were being polled in the jury box, one man changed his vote.

When my magazine piece appeared, a letter came from a man in Indianapolis, a social worker. “Too often I have seen the law is a club, used to break open the lives of people,” he wrote. Now I had seen that too, and I ran from the sight.

It was after midnight when I drove through Litchfield, past the jail, past the courthouse with the clock tower, a town at rest. I drove up our driveway, went into the house, turned on all the lights, and made a gin and tonic. I called Jim in New York and I made some other calls, but I was still restless, angry, bursting to talk. I got back in the car, leaving my drink melting on the slate counter by the sink. I turned the car radio to a crazy level and drove south, looking for Tarrytown, where a birthday party for a friend from my
Life
magazine days was going on. I got lost several times, and it was about four in the morning when I got there. But there was still a remnant of a party going on, a good audience. I began to talk about Peter Reilly and what had happened to him. Daylight came, and I talked on and on, insisting, like the crazed old mariner, that everyone pay attention to what I had to say.

14

Eddie Houston at the Shell Station had told Peter he could have a job anytime, so in the weeks between the verdict and the sentencing, Peter pumped gas a mile or so from the little house where Barbara died. At home, at the Madows, he seemed unworried, even content, as he played his guitar and worked on an old car he was rebuilding in the driveway. He watched
Ben Hur
on television and rode his bike. When Roger came by to interview him, he took a charming and most uncharacteristic picture of Peter, standing by his bike in front of the house. “The thought of returning to jail scares me,” Peter told Roger. “Someday I want to hold a job, own my own home, and raise a family. This whole thing is just throwing a wrench into all my plans.”

My own plans hadn't been devastated, but they had gone astray. As the end of the trial approached, I had accepted an assignment from
The New York Times Magazine
to do a piece on Robert Redford. After a courthouse winter, surrounded by autopsy slides and sheriffs, I was ready for a little glitter in my life. I told the
Times
I'd be free the week after Easter.

Besides needing a professional change of scene, I needed psychological distance. Free-lance photography clearly was a dream we couldn't afford; Jim had begun looking for a regular job again. It was sad to have our hopes collapse, Everyman's dream of getting out of the rat race; it was even sadder to have so much trouble trying to get back in. Unemployment was a national epidemic in 1974; we began to borrow money, and our tempers began to shred.

But Peter wasn't free the week after Easter, so neither was I. I called the
Times Magazine
and explained why I couldn't do the Redford piece. My editor said all right, but later he grumbled goodnaturdly to my sister, who worked there, that he didn't really understand my reasons. I couldn't blame him. But Peter Reilly had occurred in obscurity, and it seemed urgent, now, that the discussion of what had happened, and why, and what might be done about it, spread beyond the silent Litchfield hills.