Born to Lose (38 page)

Q. Can you tell us whose prints they are?

A. They belong to Stanley Barton Hoss Jr.

The prosecution's final witness was Lieutenant Bill Valenta, a firearms expert. Valenta had fired test rounds from the suspected murder weapon, a nine-shot .22 caliber. However, a defect in the gun damaged markings in the bullets so that “less than 10%” could be identified as fired from the gun. Further, the bullet removed from Officer Zanella's body was so badly mutilated that it lacked the individual characteristics that would have permitted Valenta to say for sure that the weapon in evidence was the one that had fired the bullet that killed the policeman.

Valenta's testimony did not hold high the “smoking gun.” Fagan had hoped for a better conclusion, but at least the jury would know all tests had been done and nothing had been hidden from them.

There remained a single item that the prosecution wanted the jury to know. Of the several letters found in Hoss's motel room shortly after his capture, one was chosen for exposure. The testimony of Fawkes and Conover had scuttled Snyder's attempts to suppress the letter.

Fagan explained to the jurors what they were about to hear, then, letter in hand, read aloud the words written by Stanley to Jodine: “Tell your brother-in-law I have something for him. He's the one that turned me in.” After a calculated pause, Fagan summarized parts where Hoss professed his love for Jodine, then, with no little theatrics, Fagan stood still in the hushed courtroom, taking time to gaze out at the crowd before squaring himself before the jury, standing closer to them than he ever had before. In clear voice, Fagan read the last paragraph:

“If anyone else is reading my letters to you, like the cops, I want them to
know that it will not hurt me to kill one more of them. They will have to kill me to take me in.”

This passage caused such a stir that Judge Strauss smacked his gavel and barked for quiet. At this perfect moment, Fagan declared, “The prosecution rests.”

Edgar Snyder stood up before Fagan had even sat down. In a surprise move, without calling a single witness, he announced, “The defense, too, rests its case.”

Edgar Snyder never outright denied that his client killed Joe Zanella; he only implied that the prosecution's case was feeble, its evidence flimsy, and— in short, that it hadn't proved a thing. Snyder knew otherwise, of course, but, in his summation, his power of suggestion and bulldog advocacy was meant to cast doubt on the degree of Hoss's guilt, soften perceptions of his client's murderous intentions, and diminish the emotional reactions of an excited jury.

“Who among the witnesses, I ask you, was sure of the shooter's description?” Snyder queried, as though Esther Santone had never existed. “Crew cut, long hair … dark jersey, white T-shirt? And did you wonder about the demeanor of witness Fred Mangol, who said he saw my client in Winky's restaurant shortly before the shooting?” Snyder placed his hand over his heart as he added, “I had no trouble seeing Mr. Mangol's animosity toward my client as he answered questions which—could you tell?—were carefully rehearsed.” Snyder then recalled Miss Maxwell's frequent smiles during testimony. Snyder arched his brows. “Did she look like a girl who'd been victimized for eighteen hours … and how often had she been left alone but made no attempt to leave?”

After taking swipes at everything and everyone, Snyder likened the prosecution's case to a puzzle where “all the pieces don't seem to fit in right,” and concluded with an emphatic, “What has been testified to is not true beyond a reasonable doubt!”

In a summation lasting only fifteen minutes, compared with Snyder's full hour, Fagan adamantly asserted that the shooting of Zanella was murder in the first degree. “This is one of the few cases in my experience where we have given you everything except a recording and picture of what was going on. And of Mr. Snyder's remark about Karen Maxwell? She is a young girl who has been scared half to death by Stanley Hoss. If she smiled occasionally on the stand it was nothing more than a nervous reaction, but remember well Hoss's words to her … ‘I'm the one who killed the Verona policeman.'”

The lean-jawed rep for the people pointed directly at Hoss. “Because of the defendant's outlook on society and disregard of others, a man is dead. It is murder in the first degree. This is no time to worry about Stanley Hoss. It's time to worry about you and me.”

Beginning his jury instruction at 3:15 this Monday afternoon of March 9, 1970, it took Judge Strauss a full two hours to explain to the jury the possible decisions it could reach, and to review the testimony of the fifty-four prosecution witnesses.

The jury went out at 6:45 P.M. Few of those waiting ventured too far away, as a quick verdict was expected. Short of three hours later, the jury returned—with a unanimous decision. To all gathered, the tipstaff cautioned against outbursts. Standing while all others were seated, Foreperson Vee Toner announced, “The decision of the jury is murder in the first degree.”

Hoss showed a slight smile. His father appeared shaken while his sister Betty wept, as did Jodine and another of Hoss's girlfriends, known only as JoAnn. If there were other tears, they were of relief and joy. Officer Zanella's widow, only twenty-three years old, had been seated in the front row throughout the trial but was not present for the guilty verdict.

Edgar Snyder requested a poll of the jurors, at which court clerk Howard Roth instructed, “Juror, look upon the defendant. Defendant, look upon the juror. Guilty or innocent, how say you?” Hoss stared at each juror as he listened to a dozen individual affirmations of his guilt.

Hoss was tried under the Split Verdict Act, meaning that the same jurors who had found him guilty would hear aggravating or mitigating circumstances before settling his fate—life in prison or death. Strauss told the jury not to contemplate their additional duties but to “get a good night's sleep.”

Although the hour was late and the penalty phase was to begin next morning at 9:30, the attorneys and scores of others repaired across the street to the Common Plea Restaurant, a popular hangout for the legal crowd, for well-earned drinks and the first-rate veal capriccioso. Snyder and Baxter took a table at one end of the restaurant, while Fagan and Minahan were seated at the other end of the tastefully appointed room. Both parties were surrounded and peppered with questions and comments. If any of the attorneys spoke directly of the trial off the record, that status was respected by the reporters.

Through a haze of cigar smoke, the fun-loving Freddie Baxter said to an out-of-town newsman, “Do ya know what us attorneys call this joint, the Common Plea, if we're in here beggin' to cut a deal?” Baxter blew out a
ring of smoke, then said, smiling … “The Common
please!
” Asked about the judge, Baxter said, “Lordy, makes you jump through hoops, does he not? But ol' Sammy is razor sharp, tough but fair, and everyone knows his experience … tried more murder cases than anyone ever in the whole damn county! I'll tell ya, if you have a really sound psychiatric case before him—and I mean babbling to Martians—he may weaken, but otherwise, with Strauss you go in on your knees or come out swinging.”

To those gathered round, Snyder laughed when telling how Strauss had threatened once during the trial “to put me in the same jail cell with my client.” Asked if Hoss wants to live, Snyder said, “Oh yes.” No sooner had he said that, than Snyder was called to the front phone. On his return to the table, he whispered in Baxter's ear, grabbed his briefcase, and picked his way through the crowd to hurry out the door.

Never one to shy away from interesting conversation over drinks, newsman Bill Burns sat at the same table with prosecutors Fagan and Minahan. The celebrated KDKA anchorman always wanted the facts, the currency of his trade, but Burns also relished behind-the-scenes stories, back-room talk, and plain ol' gossip, which is, as Burns explained, only half-joking, “pretty much always true, you know.” If there was one newsman who did not miss an hour's testimony throughout the trial, it was Bill Burns. A law-and-order man, Burns made no secret of whose side he was on.

The prosecutors were flattered by his company and impressed by the depth of his questions. Indeed, it was only Burns who, voice lowered, asked Fagan if he planned to mention the “Maryland case” during the penalty phase “or do you think Zanella is enough?” With this single question Burns had pinpointed the prosecutors' worries.

“If we knew for sure the jury's resolve to give death for killing a policeman,” said Fagan to Burns, “then that's all we need, but we don't know that. Convicting someone is one thing, voting for death is another, so I'm thinking the jury should be as knowledgeable as we are about Mr. Hoss. Hoss is rare … but it's for his type that we have a death penalty.”

Chuckling, Burns asked Minahan, “Does Mr. First Chair agree with your Chief Counsel?”

“Yep, think I do,” said Minahan. “Hoss is unredeemable. He's broken, can't be fixed. Even if he could be, so what? He's done too much. It's just too late.”

Burns nodded. “Good talking to you, gentlemen, and congratulations on the first degree.” Then he whispered, as he scooped his leather overcoat
across a forearm, “We need a fitting end.” Fagan and Minahan watched the famous newsman limp (from an old war wound) toward the front door. He was due on the air in twenty minutes for KDKA's late broadcast.

In the morning, Fred Baxter opened the penalty phase by asking Judge Strauss if it would be proper to mention why Edgar Snyder was absent from the courtroom. After leaving the Common Plea the night before, Snyder had driven directly to the hospital, where Stephanie, his wife of six years, was waiting in some discomfort to give birth to their second child. Snyder and his wife had been taken by surprise; the birth was happening three weeks early. The parents stayed up through the night, Stephanie in labor, and by the time Baxter spoke up in court, the baby still hadn't arrived.

Strauss so informed the jury and explained that Baxter, as first chair, would now act in Snyder's behalf.

Strauss then told the jurors it was time to affix penalty, explaining that each side would present testimony that might assist the jurors in determining the punishment to be inflicted.

During his crime spree, Hoss had committed a multitude of felonies— robbery, theft, rape, kidnap, weapons possession, murder. How much of these events and in what detail should or could the jury hear? Fagan, with Duggan's blessing, decided the jury should hear a lot, so as never to be confused about the vicious hell-born creature in the docket and what would be, as Bill Burns put it, a fitting end. Fagan would do whatever was legally permissible to ensure that Hoss was given the death penalty.

Don Minahan was on board with the prosecution's thrust, yet he had reservations. “Fagan's thinking was legally correct,” remembered Minahan, “but we all felt there was a change in the wind about the Supreme Court's view of capital punishment. Everyone knew they were poised to do an about-face with death sentences, and I felt they'd be looking for anything to overturn a death penalty. If we reviewed Hoss's crimes from Zanella through apprehension, it may look like piling on. It was quite legal … but if the top court took a step in favor of the criminal … ? The lead counsel makes the call, so I just said okay.”

Leaving no stone unturned, Fagan's “path to death” began with events
before
Zanella's murder, when he called as witness Nancy Falconer, the pregnant woman that Hoss, with Richard Zurka, had threatened, bound, and robbed.

Before Fagan even formulated his first question to Nancy, Baxter objected to the testimony, a signal that each side, prosecution and defense,
knew where the other was going, and were prepared for “house to house fighting.” Baxter's next words, at sidebar, formed the defense's core battle cry: “I object to testimony of a crime for which my client has not been tried. We don't know whether Stanley Hoss's admissions were voluntary …”

Fagan jumped in: “Snyder already made that inquiry when he interrogated the FBI agent about Hoss's admissions.”

Lines drawn, it was up to the judge to rule.

“We are going to follow the directive of the Supreme Court in
Commonwealth v. McCoy
,” said Strauss. “In relation to penalty, we will permit records of prior convictions, or confessions and admissions of the defendant, even if there be no convictions.”

Baxter had expected as much. “I understand the present state of the law that permits the prosecution to do this. I am just protecting the record.”

Favored by Strauss' ruling, Fagan let loose.

After Nancy Falconer spoke of her “voice ID” of Hoss, Baxter asked, “Have you ever testified in a trial seeking justice for your alleged misfortune?”

A. No, I haven't

Q. Has Mr. Hoss ever had the opportunity to defend himself in such a case?

A. No, he hasn't.

Next, Agent Gerald Mohr stated that Hoss admitted stealing a .22 J. C. Higgins revolver from the Falconer home in late March 1969. When Baxter asked if Mohr had testified on Indictment No. 107, October Sessions, 1969, Mohr replied, “It hasn't been tried yet.” Jabbing his finger in the air, Baxter emphasized, “That is the point I am trying to make.”

Detective Bill Jennings told the jury about Hoss's “unlawful carnal knowledge” of the body of Kathy Defino. As this was an actual conviction against Hoss, Baxter had little to say.

Each representing another strand of hemp wrapping Hoss, the witnesses spoke of serious crimes and admissions, but, by design, Fagan was saving the worst for last: all the testimony thus far was but a prelude to the unforgivable affair in Maryland, which would mark the now-convicted cop-killer as soulless.

It was late morning, with Agent Danny Dunn on the stand, when the tragic shadow of the Peugeots crept over the trial … and the jury box.