A Death in Canaan (44 page)

CBS came to Canaan to film Peter playing with his band for a segment on “Sixty Minutes.” Three newspapers sent photographers to take pictures of the people taking pictures. “Cameras Whirr with Reilly in Star Role,” said a headline.

Newsweek
came, and
Time. Good Housekeeping
offered $300 for an interview with the committee. Peter was a property and everybody wanted a piece. Another writer began talking about a movie deal; Peter was told he would get rich.

“I think Peter's caught in a spider web,” Jean Beligni said. It was a web we all had spun together, though, including Peter. For two years he had been a fixture—often the lead item—on the local six o'clock news, and sometimes again at eleven. Nanny would wring her hands in annoyance and dismay as her dinner cooled on the stove. “I'd kind of still like to think of myself as an unknown kid from northwestern Connecticut,” he said, on a day in early spring, standing in the Madows' driveway. But the quote went out over the UPI wire, with a UPI picture of Peter; microphones from Channel 3 and Channel 8 draped around his neck.

Always—or almost always—people's intentions had been to help Peter. But somehow, in the helping, Peter acquired a dimension that exceeded the facts, perhaps even the implications, of the tragedy. When the
Torrington Register
printed “The Ballad of Peter Reilly,” by George Cyr, Peter balanced on the brink of legend. And what better place could there be for a legend than a town called Canaan?

15

It was like the second act of a play. There had been an unusually long intermission, nearly two years, but now the curtain was going up again.

Once more the Litchfield green was covered with snow, and new flakes drifted heavily down past the tall schoolroom windows. Inside, there were some changes. At the threshold of the courtroom, a sheriff stood guard by a metal detector that had been there ever since Judge Speziale got a death threat. It wasn't connected with the Reilly case, but they had to take precautions. The call had come late at night. Mary Speziale had answered. “We're going to blow your husband's goddamn head off!” the caller had said, and hung up. A few minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the same voice. “And we're going to do it tonight!”

In the press row, Roger and George and Greg and Farn were replaced by other new young faces. Joe O'Brien was back, an entrenched courtroom veteran, and Charles Kochakian was back too.

Beyond the bar rail, most of the principal players were onstage again. Mr. Roberts set up his stenotype machine in the same efficient way. Judge Speziale, presiding, still looked studious, and when a courtroom artist sketched the judge, he caught the light from the desk lamp glinting on his steel-rimmed glasses, and my memories came rushing back.

John Bianchi looked a little more rumpled, a little less sleek, than he had at the first trial. There was more pressure on him now; in this suit for a new trial, Peter Reilly was the plaintiff, and John Bianchi referred to himself, and to the state, as “the defendant.” But he was still the orator; he often referred to Roy Daly as “my brother” or “Brother Daly.” Along with the prosecution assistant, Robert Beach, there was another attorney at Mr. Bianchi's table. He was Joseph Gallicchio, whose suits were beautifully tailored; his teeth very white. His voice came out dark and velvety, as though it were filtered through his sideburns.

Roy Daly, of course, was the major replacement in the cast. But his assistant, Bob Hartwell, had the same Dickensian appearance as Peter Herbst—moustache and glasses, and his hair had a rounded, old-fashioned look, as though it might have been cut around a bowl.

Even some of the witnesses were familiar, especially in the first part of the hearing. Roy Daly was basing his petition for a new trial on three major issues: a new time sequence; his charge that the state had withheld evidence that might have cleared Peter; and new evidence.

Time was truly of the essence. In the trial, Mr. Daly said the prosecution had fixed the time of Peter Reilly's arrival home at 9:30 to 9:40. Barbara Fenn, the night supervisor at Sharon. Hospital, had testified that Peter's call came through at 9:40, and Marion Madow had said she got the call from Peter between 9:40 and 9:50.

Mr. Daly now asserted that Peter hadn't arrived home until 9:50 or a bit later, and he called witnesses to prove it.

Father Paul and the Reverend Dakers, who had seen Peter leave the Teen Center, testified that they'd reached Johnny's Restaurant, a few minutes away from the church, at 9:50
P.M
. John Sochocki's aunt, Judy MacNeil, testified that John, whom Peter drove home that night, had arrived at exactly 9:45. She remembered the time because she hadn't expected him until eleven or so, and she was surprised to see him back so early. She said she had told the police this, and they had come back later to ask whether her clock agreed with the noonday siren in Canaan. She said it did.

Jim Mulhern testified that he'd timed the drive from John Sochocki's house, not far from the church, out to Peter's house. He said it had taken five minutes and twenty-nine seconds. After he testified, Jim Mulhern glanced at Peter. The policeman's sideburns were longer now; he wore a yellow shirt, a rust-colored tie, and a plaid jacket.

Joanne Mulhern was back, as fresh and pretty as ever, to say she'd left the Teen Center at 9:45. She said when she got home, she had called Sharon Hospital to talk to a friend, and the switchboard operator told her she was very busy because an emergency call was coming in from the Barbara Gibbons place. Mrs. Mulhern said it was 9:51 or 9:52
P.M
.

The switchboard operator, Elizabeth Swart, said she remembered Joanne Mulhern calling that night, and she remembered, too, that Peter had called.

Nurse Barbara Fenn had taken that emergency room call. She had been the first prosecution witness at Peter's trial, and although she had changed jobs since then her testimony had not changed. She said she still remembered the call coming in at approximately 9:40, and she stared hard at Mr. Daly as she said it.

He reminded her that the state police got the call at 9:58.

“I ask you: Did you wait eighteen minutes to call the police, from nine forty to nine fifty-eight?” Mr. Daly asked.

“I can't recall,” Mrs. Fenn replied.

Mr. Daly produced an emergency room log sheet that the executive director of Sharon Hospital had brought in, along with a radio log showing ambulance calls.

“I ask you again: Did you wait eighteen minutes to notify the police?” Mr. Daly asked.

John Bianchi objected.

“I claim the question,” Mr. Daly said sharply, “on the basis that her testimony in the earlier trial was false.” The courtroom was suddenly very quiet, the harsh word
false
vibrating in the air. He turned back to the witness. “Do you know of any instances where you've waited eighteen minutes in an emergency situation to notify the state police?” he asked. “Could you have received the call later than nine forty?” Barbara Fenn, in a smaller voice now, said she could have.

At the original trial, Marion Madow had described the scene from the movie
Kelley's Heroes,
which she'd been watching when Peter called. Marion had estimated the time 9:40 to 9:50
P.M
. Now, Roy Daly called Michael Marden, director of prime-time feature films for CBS Television in New York. Mr. Marden testified that the scene Marion described, where the last soldier was boarding a tank to cross the river, had been transmitted by the network to its affiliated stations at precisely ten seconds past 9:50
P.M
. on the night Barbara died. When Mr. Bianchi cross-examined, Mr. Marden said that a local station might have omitted that scene, or shown it later, but it could not possibly have shown it earlier.

Dr. Frank Lovallo said that Barbara had called him that night sometime between 9:20 and 9:40, to ask about some tests she'd had done. Dr. Bornemann's daughter-in-law, whom Peter had spoken to and had taken to be the doctor's wife, said his call came “between nine forty-five and ten.”

“The case is surrounded by clocks,”
The New York Times
story had said, and John Bianchi seemed to agree. “All these clocks and watches,” he said with irony, “and none of them seem to match.”

The testimony on the time sequence came early in the hearing, some of it vaguely familiar, even a little boring. Then, after court was adjoured one day, word came that the fingerprint on the back door of Barbara's house had been identified at last. It belonged to Tim Parmalee. His fingerprints had not been on file at the time of the trial. But in the spring of 1974 Tim was picked up for stealing a car. His fingerprints were taken, and now they were matched. It was an irony that Barbara, with her prankish sense of humor, would have relished. The car Tim was accused of stealing was taken from Jacobs Garage in Falls Village, the shop with which Barbara had had a long-running feud.

When the fingerprint match came in, a new reporter asked John Bianchi whether the Parmalee brothers would now be charged—word was out that the new evidence involved Michael Parmalee as well. Mr. Bianchi laughed. “Charge them with what?” he asked, and even the
Lakeville Journal,
in its next editorial, had a word of caution. “It does not necessarily follow that either of them committed the crime,” the
Journal
declared. “To rush to such a conclusion without either indictment or trial would be to do to others the sort of injustice that some of Reilly's defenders contend was done to him.” Around East Canaan, the subject was much discussed. “We're the Legal Defense Fund of Litchfield County,” Jean said to Elaine Monty, when they talked on the phone. “What'll we do if the Parmalees come to us for help?” Elaine gulped and said she guessed they'd have to help. Jean thought so too. “I'd feel like a hypocrite if we didn't,” she said, and Marion agreed.

Our house was closed for the winter, no heat or water, so for most of the hearing, I stayed with the Madows, sleeping in the extra bed in Nan's room. The atmosphere was strained. Mickey had left his job after more than twenty years, and was trying free-lance as a salesman. Marion was working for an accountant in Salisbury during the day and doing bookeeping at the
Lakeville Journal
some nights. “It's hard,” Marion said, simply, about their situation. She didn't complain, but she seemed depressed, even when things seemed to go well at the hearing. One night she and Nan and I were watching the Shirley MacLaine TV special, just the three of us. Mickey was on the road, and the boys were out. Marion said she enjoyed happy shows, and as much as she liked Arthur Miller, she didn't care for his plays, or for any play that wasn't happy. She remembered another play,
The Glass Menagerie,
that she hadn't liked. “I just walked out feeling sorry for her,” Marion said. “I don't like sad endings. I have enough sad endings in my own life.”

The committee meetings were different now, too. There were arguments. Some committee members were unhappy because on
Sixty Minutes,
Marion had told Mike Wallace that if it hadn't been for Mickey and herself, Peter would have had no place to go. And, at a committee meeting, she had told the others that she would do anything, walk over anybody, for Peter's sake. Some of the people on the committee said Marion was getting a swelled head from all the publicity; Marion replied that some of the people on the committee were small-minded and jealous. “I wish we could all go back to the way we felt in the beginning,” Beverly King told me wistfully.

Sergeant Pennington was back, talking about fingerprints. He said that at the time of the trial, he'd had 325,000 fingerprint cards on file. Now he had 400,000. He recalled how he'd taken the picture of Barbara's back door, that night after midnight, after he'd dusted the door with a gray powder. Mr. Bianchi asked the sergeant whether he could determine the age of a print, and the sergeant said he couldn't. When shown the photograph of the print, he explained that through a color reverse process, the shades were the opposite from what they appeared. Judge Speziale smiled gently. “So white is black, and black is white,” he said.

Timothy Parmalee was clipped and trim in his dark green uniform, a marksman's medal on his jacket. He had enlisted in the Army in the spring of 1975 and had been called to active duty that fall, when he turned eighteen. When Roy Daly questioned him about his activities on the day Barbara died, Tim said he'd had dinner with his father at their house on Route 63. His sister, her husband and their six children lived there, too. His mother was working the evening shift at Wash 'n Dri, where one of Peter's jurors had worked.

Around 6 or 6:30, Tim continued, he went to the Falls Village market to buy diapers for his sister's baby. He went to the package store, too, along with his brother-in-law, and Wayne Collier, to buy beer. Timothy said he didn't go in, though. Then they went back to his father's house. It was around 7:30.

“And did you stay in your father's house for the rest of the evening?” Roy Daly asked.

“No,” Tim said.

“Where did you go when you left?”

“Across the road to my uncle's house.”

“Were you alone, or was someone else with you?”

“Wayne was with me. We just sat down and talked and drank beer,” Tim said. “Till eight thirty, quarter to nine.”

“And then what did you do?”

“Went over to my sister Marie's house … used the phone.” Marie's house was next door. Tim said he had called a girl in Massachusetts and talked “twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

“About what time did you place that call?” Mr. Daly asked.

“Five minutes to nine,” Tim said.

“And the call lasted twenty, twenty-five minutes. Is that what you said a moment ago?”

“It was before quarter to nine I made the phone call,” Tim said.

“Now, after you finished the call from your sister Marie's house, what, if anything, did you do?”