A Death in Canaan (42 page)

Mr. Bianchi looked very grave. “Now, there are some things the state knew also that did not come into evidence, your honor.” He picked up a white envelope from the counsel table. “A benefactor of this family—a letter from her had been received by the family just that day, indicating that her assistance was finished, that the family was going to have to go it by themselves. And the benefactor has been completely out of this matter since that very day.” Mr. Bianchi put the envelope down, glanced briefly at Miss Roraback, then looked back at the judge.

“I have always felt that this was a matter of manslaughter, not murder,” the prosecutor said. “The end results took just seconds to accomplish. But Barbara Gibbons had a right to live. I would conclude by recommending a minimum of seven years to a maximum of sixteen.”

There was a kind of rushing sound, a rustle in the courtroom. Then Catherine Roraback stood up. She was wearing the same salmon-colored two-piece dress she'd worn the first time I saw her, at the pretrial hearing.

“The defendant has denied his guilt of these charges,” she said. “I would urge your honor to consider the total background of Mr. Reilly. He has lived here in the hills of Litchfield County. He has grown up here—gone to school here—had his friends here—had his roots here.” She spoke slowly and with what seemed a tinge of sadness. “He has always enjoyed a very good reputation within this community. He is polite—responsible—respectful—sincere. He has a sense of humor. He enjoys the outdoors. He enjoys the company of his friends. He has been an adequate student.” She smiled slightly. “Not an outstanding student, but an adequate student. He has worked for various people, who have submitted letters to your honor, including Aldo Beligni, who talks of Peter's desire to make something of himself.

“The other aspect of this case is the strength of community support,” Miss Roraback said. “Some of it may seem excessive in your honor's eyes, but it seems to be a sincere expression of real support for a young man in trouble. The purpose of our criminal system, as I understand the theory, is rehabilitation, and I submit that however important the correctional aspects, they fall a good deal short of an ideal situation for a young man such as Mr. Reilly who has no prior criminal record.

“I myself observed Peter when he was in jail,” Miss Roraback said, as though she were confiding in a friend, “and I watched a continuing period of what I can only characterize as a withdrawal from society, being skeptical of it; a slight cynicism.”

Judge Speziale had alternated between watching Miss Roraback and looking at the letters and petitions he had with him. Now he frowned and interrupted her.

“I spent a good deal of time last evening over these letters,” he said. “I do not find any remorse. I don't see remorse anywhere here at all, Miss Roraback.”

Miss Roraback stared at him for a moment. “I think remorse is not the word to apply,” she said. “He has stated that he is, in fact, innocent. I would not think that remorse is going to be created in Peter Reilly by incarceration. I do not think that Peter Reilly is going to turn into a better man in the length of time Mr. Bianchi is talking about. Peter Reilly, being the young man he is, highly impressionable, young, still in his very formative years, might indeed be made into a good and functioning member of our society if he were able to do so in a loving, warm family situation.

“In prison, he would be destroyed as a person,” Miss Roraback said bluntly. “I don't think that's the intention of our law, but I think that's the result. I ask for the imposition of a suspended sentence. I realize it would be an unusual step, but this is an unusual case.”

Now the judge stared back at Catherine Roraback. He stared and blinked, as though he could not comprehend what she had asked. Mr. Bianchi stared at her too, as one by one, people stood to speak in Peter's behalf. One by one they came up from the gallery, through the little wooden gate, and stood next to Peter at the counsel table, facing the judge. Barbara's cousins came first.

“I plead with you not to send him to jail,” June said, clasping her hands in front of her tightly.

“We are the parents of three boys,” Vicky said. “We have the room.” Vicky began to cry.

Father Paul stood up. “Knowing his family background, and knowing Peter's personality, that he is so easily influenced, it would be best for him to be in a good family situation. There is no substitute for a good home.”

Judge Speziale looked more and more worried as more and more people stood up. The frown lines on his forehead seemed to burrow into his skin, even as we watched.

Mickey stood up. “Your honor mentioned the word ‘remorse,'” he said. “Peter has lived with us since—since this situation arose, and I have seen his sorrow. My wife has seen his sorrow. I have heard him say, ‘My mom did this,' or, ‘She used to do that.'” Sitting at the counsel table now, Peter began to cry. Watching him, Marion began to cry too. Mickey looked at Peter, then he looked at the judge. “A boy like this deserves a real good break,” Mickey said.

When Marion stood up, she told how, when Peter was in jail, she had noticed his cynical attitude. “He was guarded and suspicious and was not sure of anything we said,” Marion told the judge. “If he goes to jail, he's going to go deeper into himself. He
does
listen, and he's a very good boy.” Marion reached out, right there in the courtroom, and stroked Peter's hair.

John Bianchi stood up once more. “The duties of the state are sometimes very heavy,” he said solemnly. “This was a horrible homicide. There have been thousands of words written about this case. But I have not heard one word of Barbara Gibbons, who lies dead in her grave.”

The judge looked at Peter. “Peter Reilly, do you have anything to say before sentence is imposed?”

Peter stood up. His hands were clasped behind his back again. “I will not be a threat to society,” Peter said in a very low voice. “I just want a chance to live a decent life.” Then he bent his head and cried.

“This is the longest trial I've had in my whole judicial career,” Judge Speziale said. “This is an extremely difficult case. This court is impressed by the outpouring of the defendant's friends in the community. But a human being has been killed, as a result of a very vicious and horrible homicide …” I wasn't crying, but I felt strange. The judge's voice seemed very faraway, and I seemed to hear only in snatches. “Court … sentences you, Peter Reilly … six to sixteen years.”

Then there was another rush, another flurry in court. People were crying all around me. A woman on the aisle seat in the front row was crying so hard it was mentioned in some news stories. The troopers walked quickly over and stood behind Peter. John Bianchi asked that Peter's bail be raised to $100,000 now, and Judge Speziale, looking anguished, changed it to $60,000 instead. He said he would be ready to help counsel find the proper facility for Peter to serve his sentence, and then very quickly, court was adjourned. It was over.

We milled around on the green, in the chilly drizzle, watching for Peter. Raymond Lind, one of the jurors, was standing further down the green; he had come back to watch, too. A small crowd on the sidewalk was held back by policemen, and the way was clear. But we never saw Peter. As we watched the front door, a police cruiser backed into the little driveway alongside the courthouse. There was a slamming door, then the cruiser shot out of the driveway and made a fast right turn, speeding past us. “There he goes!” somebody shouted. Peter was off to the penitentiary, taken there under maximum security. There were two sheriffs in the back seat, one on either side of him, and two policemen in the front. He was shackled in leg irons, and handcuffed to a restraining band around his waist.

Peter had been convicted on a Friday, at the start of a holiday weekend. Now he had been sentenced on a Friday and was being driven off to Somers at the start of another busy, festive weekend. That night was Prom Night at Regional, and on Monday, the Memorial Day parade was held in Canaan, down West Main Street and out to the ballfield for the official opening of the Little League season.

John Bianchi, dressed in snow-white slacks like a yachtsman, spoke at the ceremony. Standing at home plate, he looked around the field, at the family groups sitting in the bleachers, at the children hanging out of the back of pickup trucks, at the clumps of people standing around on the wet grass of the outfield.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, very much as Peter Reilly had stood in court. “I want to tell you boys that the object of the game is to win,” he said. “There is no substitute for winning.”

The bond for an appeal had been raised from $50,000 to $60,000, and the extra $10,000 had to be raised at once, to save Peter from a prison weekend. Everyone had vivid pictures of gun towers and electric fences and men hanging around the shower room, just waiting for Peter Reilly.

We stood on the green while people scurried around, trying to raise the cash. Altogether, with the tears and the running around, and the people clustered in the rain, having been run out of the courthouse by Sheriff Menser, it was an absurdly theatrical scene, and it had an appreciative audience. In the State's Attorney's office overlooking West Street and the green, there were faces at the window all the time. Sam Holden was watching, and so was a blonde woman in a pink suit. She was laughing.

As it got chillier, some of the crowd came to my house and milled around my living room, sipping coffee Judy Liner had made. Nobody was crying anymore, but after a while some of us got nervous, just waiting around, and we drove back into town. Mickey was standing on the courthouse steps, looking worried. He said they had $7,000, but he couldn't figure out what was keeping Murray. At 1:48, Murray screeched around the corner of the jail. He had the rest of the money.

“Now will they bring Peter back?” Marie Dickinson asked. Bill shook his head. “Somebody has to go get him,” he said. “When they take you to Somers, it's a one-way trip.”

That night, for the third time in three months, there was open house on Locust Hill. The night Peter had got out of jail, the mood was buoyant; on the night of the verdict, it had been stunned and somber. Tonight the mood was somewhere in between: both down and up, and defiant. Marion told about getting Peter out of jail. A guard had talked with the Madows as they waited for Peter. “I'm glad you came for him,” the guard told Marion. “That kid would have disappeared in here.”

Peter showed off his souvenirs—two sets of white underwear with red stenciled numbers, a razor and five double-edged blades, a toothbrush, two big blue patterned handkerchiefs. “Very, very nice,” Dick Monty said. “Just like home. All you needed was a bowl of milk and a cat.”

Peter said he had only one major regret about the day. “I wish I hadn't gotten the haircut,” he said. “The judge didn't even notice. It didn't help.” Murray Madow looked annoyed. “But I'll tell you what
would
have helped,” Murray said. “When you were on the witness stand, Peter Reilly, you should have cried and cried. You should have kept saying, I didn't do it, I didn't do it.”

The Belignis didn't come that night, so I stopped by on my way home. I asked Aldo how he felt. “Disgusted,” Aldo said. “We were like Chicken Little. We should have said what we thought a long time ago. Nobody's going to shut me up again.”

“I've been thinking about the sentence,” Jean said. “I don't think one man should have that kind of power. You know, I used to think the colored people were wrong when they said, ‘Power to the people!' Now I think they were right.”

Back in our living room, Jim and I talked about the trial, the verdict, the sentencing. Everything was over, yet it had just begun. Mickey warned the committee that they were settling down to “a long, steady grind.” And the
Lakeville Journal
reported it that way.
UNDAUNTED
,
REILLY FRIENDS PLAN LONG
-
TERM EFFORT
. The
Journal
ran another editorial about the tapes, pointing out that Peter Reilly had been “almost pathetically eager” to cooperate with the police. And they published another letter from Bea Keith's mother, Mrs. Tompkins, a wry footnote to the past eight months. Since polygraph tests were inadmissible in court, she said, why were they given?

Arthur Miller called me the afternoon of the sentencing, and the next morning I drove down to Roxbury. I sat in his cluttered little studio in the back of a lovely old farmhouse with a view of the hills, faraway and serene. He was interested in Peter Reilly, and the next week he drove over to Canaan to meet Peter and the others. Roger described the famous playwright, attending a committee meeting, “dressed in a blue workshirt and tan chinos, cross-legged on a folding chair, puffing a pipe and listening.”

Mike Nichols was back in town, too. He called his friend William Styron and suggested we all get together to talk about Peter Reilly. “Why not?” Styron said, and suggested Sunday at his place. It sounded casual, but Styron already felt strongly about the Reilly affair. He said he had had his doubts about the tapes when he first read
New Times,
then he had put the matter aside. “Oh well,” he said, “that's the way Connecticut justice goes.” But he remembered it, and when Mike Nichols called, he was ready to get involved. William Styron, who had won a Pulitzer for
The Confessions of Nat Turner,
was not unfamiliar with the criminal justice system. He and Nichols, along with Philip Roth, had posted bond for a man who was finally cleared of a murder charge after three trials and seven years in New York prisons.

The group that Rose and Bill Styron had gathered in their Roxbury home more than made up in glamor for my loss of Robert Redford. Besides Mike Nichols and the Styrons, Jean Widmark was there, the producer Lewis Allen, and an array of writers, including Renata Adler and John Phillips. The months of the trial had been emotionally and financially draining for Catherine Roraback; there was talk of a new lawyer, and Arthur Miller stopped by to say he was working on that. We had drinks; we ate spaghetti carbonara, salad, and chocolate mousse; and I went on another talking jag. But the Styrons and their friends wanted to hear, and when Mike Nichols suggested that the group pledge a year's interest on the bail loan, some of them agreed to contribute. Bill Styron wrote a check that evening and handed it to me to carry back to Canaan.