Born to Lose (41 page)

Diane worried she'd again fall prey to Stanley's influence. Already he wanted her to visit him, bring the kids, and do favors. “Darling,” he wrote, “it would mean so much if you could get a Valley News subscription for me.”

Ought she tell him to go to hell, where he'd be going anyway? But sometimes his words got to her. “It would be better to let you go but I cannot stop loving you. You and the children are everything.”

“This time, though,” Diane told her sister, “he's in prison, not for a week or a few months like before. This is it!” Diane got up her resolve to completely sever ties, then the jitters set in. She recalled the time Stanley,
against her protest, had marched into the elementary school and threatened the principal.
No one
would discipline
any
of his kids. Or the time when Stanley, perceiving that the milkman was sweet on her, grabbed him around the throat. Also, she'd heard about Stanley—while in jail—setting his dastardly pals upon the Defino family. Did he still have this reach? Was there a female spy hanging around? It came down to “Goodbye, Stan”—or getting that subscription for him.

Diane scrounged up the money, which included cash from returning pop bottles, then signed him up not for a full year, but for half. Maybe he'd be dead by then.

For the time being, it seemed to work out. Stanley continued to write. He had his highs and lows but “I do not know what I would do without you in my life” was the prevailing sentiment of his letters. Diane finally informed Stan of the birth of infant Marcie by another man, and was relieved when he signaled acceptance of the situation. “I know what I put you through,” he wrote. “None of this would have happened if I was a better husband. Now I have three girls to love, and I mean it.”

It was in these moments that Diane, still with plans to inch away, wondered if Stan could make decent changes within himself? But then another letter arrived. “I heard some wonderful news on the radio today. Two good guys shot two pigs, you would say cops. That made me so happy I could have danced. I hope all the pigs had big families. Please hug the boys and kiss the girls for me.”

. . .

On May 25, 1970, the legal battle to save Stanley Hoss began. Even though Edgar Snyder had resigned from the Public Defenders Office, he felt morally bound not to leave Stanley hanging, as it were. Teamed as before with Fred Baxter, Snyder continued along pro bono.

The court listened to an assault upon the Split Verdict Act, the procedure where, after a conviction, the same jury hears additional testimony to determine punishment. “In this particular case,” said Baxter, “the jury should not have been informed [that] Mr. Hoss was a suspect in the kidnap-slaying of Mrs. Peugeot and her daughter. We were not prepared to defend our client on the Peugeot charges.”

“Baloney,” replied Samuel Strauss, the trial judge, who sat en blanc with judges Loran L. Lewis and Robert Van der Voort. “You had no defense and you know it. The Peugeots were not mentioned prior to the guilty verdict for Officer Zanella. Established precedent was followed.”

Snyder characterized the months'-long media coverage preceding the
trial as inflammatory and prejudicial. “The case should not have been heard in Allegheny County,” he argued. The court seemed little swayed. Ending the proceeding, Strauss announced that prosecutor Ted Fagan had until July 1 to submit the state's brief.

. . .

Only rarely these days did Hoss's letters mention the fix he was in. Once or twice he made a scant reference to “that cop case,” or “the crap in Maryland,” but otherwise, his missives spoke of love and hate, and all in between.

I read a book about emotional behavior. There was a story about a little girl who was punished by getting put in a clothes closet. After a rather long silence the mother inquired from her side of the door, “What are you doing?” The child replied, “I've spat on your hat, I've spat on your coat, I've spat on your shoes. Now I'm waiting for more spit.”

Stan said the story reminded him of something LeAnn, their three-year-old, would do. Diane agreed, but also mused that it was how Stan had always been. He just never could have enough spit.

For one so undereducated, Stanley's letters showed a fair degree of skill, despite the occasional grammatical error or misspelling. May 25 brought his book of the week, which included Rudolf Flesch's
25 Rules of Effective Writing
, and fostered an alchemy. As the weeks passed, mistakes decreased, and Hoss's penmanship approached calligraphy. He'd joke, “These people down here want me to learn something before they kill me.” Yet this cold man— one bullet for Joe, two for Linda, and a bunch for Lori Mae—now showed the same pride in his improved letter writing as he had in honing his criminal skills as a boy. “I'm getting good at it,” he boasted.

Upon his conviction and return to prison, Hoss's situation was markedly changed. As a convict condemned to death, he was locked up for all but fifteen minutes each day. He was denied the privileges available to inmates “free” in the general population. He was not allowed to work, use the telephone, socialize, or participate in any groups, activities, or education. Even his visits were restricted to one per month, although this was eventually expanded to four.

“I read my weekly book, usually in a day, then I look at the walls. I listen to W.E.E.P from 8 to 10 then go to sleep,” wrote Hoss.

He rarely spoke to the guards or to prisoners in nearby cells. Letters were his lifeline. Now a prolific letter writer himself, he usually responded in kind, and he implored family, friends, and women to come see him.

Stanley pressed Diane to visit with the kids. Feeling guilty about keeping their children away, she finally acquiesced. He got upset when Diane discussed changing her last name, and that of the kids. At the end of the visit, she turned away from Stanley's kiss. After a week he wrote to apologize.

I know you are right about changing names. I don't want my kids to suffer or feel different from other kids. But I want to say to you I'm very proud of the name Stanley B. Hoss, Jr. I made fools out of the best FBI guys in the country.

“Made fools out of …”? Did he mean it took so long to catch him, or something more consequential: legerdemain during FBI interviews, a shell game with bodies?

Stanley assured Diane that it was over with Jodine, but Diane was leery. One day she received an envelope. Inside was a Wanted poster of Hoss, and a piece of paper with a fly squashed on it. She
knew
this creepy message came from Jodine. In any case, Diane wrote gingerly to Stan, “I still love you but not in the strong love I used to have for you.” This wounded Stan, but he continued to write, seeking sympathy—“The world holds nothing for me”— or venting irritation about prison life—“It's no wonder I can't write you a good letter. They have this f—— homosexual locked up above me. All day long he runs his mouth to these niggers in here and it gets on my nerves.”

If Diane failed to write for a period, he'd wheedle: “Soon I'll pay for all those people I hurt. Can't you wait till then to stop hurting me?”

On June 20, 1970, Hoss was arraigned for prison breach from the Allegheny County Workhouse. At a hearing a week later the prosecution sought the addition of ten years to Hoss's sentence for Defino's rape, but Hoss's attorney adroitly argued his client had not actually been sentenced to the workhouse when the escape occurred (having been transfered there because of overcrowding), so punishment had to be capped at two years.

Hoss convinced the officers assigned to death row to play loose with the book quota. By mid-summer, he was reading almost as much as he liked, and his newspaper subscription began as well. He devoured each issue, down to the Stork Club announcements. Further, he became enamored with Shakespeare, politics (hanging a picture of George Wallace on his wall), and military history, especially Rommel, Patton, and Custer. He tried to learn, but his interpretation of what he learned was poor. In one letter, he wrote, “Judge Strauss is nothing but a dirty Jew. Hitler should have got all those f—— Jews.”

Hoss began a fitness regimen in his cell: isotonics, situps, and, as he grew stronger, 1,000 daily pushups, done in sets of 100. At 198 pounds, he had no flab. Haircuts were available monthly, but Hoss skipped them. On one legal visit, Edgar Snyder joked, “Stanley, you look like one of the Rolling Stones.”

Word spread among staff that their prize captive was devouring a book a day—Poe, Steinbeck, Twain, even the English poets—but the thinking that had brought him to prison was unchanged.

I was reading in my paper a witness against me at my trial got robbed of $36.00 then the bandit got away. The witness was Ben Tarr who has that Texaco station on Plum Street where that punk cop got shot. The only mistake the bandit made was not putting a bullet in Tarr's head.

. . .

Over the summer, a three-judge panel considered the defense's appeal of Hoss's conviction. It addressed the issues raised, one by one, and rejected them. Left for last were the two points with the most weight, the denial of a change of venue for the trial, and the introduction of testimony not strictly limited to Zanella's shooting for the sentencing phase. Judge Strauss did most of the talking for the panel.

“That venue was not changed we do not believe violated the rights of the accused,” said Strauss, “and you're aware an agreement was reached with the media to hold publicity to a minimum, particularly with regard to sensationalism. Keep in mind an unbiased jury does not mean the entire population of Allegheny County should be hermetically sealed against all largely factual news exposure.”

The venue issue done away with, all in the room, including law students and a good many established criminal attorneys, waited to hear how the panel handled the defense's chief objection.

The relatively new Split Verdict Act provided that after a verdict of first-degree murder is returned, the convicting jury may hear evidence regarding past deeds of the accused to help it determine the sentence. During the sentencing phase, therefore, Strauss had allowed the jury to hear of prior convictions, confessions, and admissions. This was unambiguous; as Fagan put it, “It says what it says.” Now Strauss fortified this position.

“The court did not violate Hoss's rights when permitting testimony concerning crimes for which he'd not been charged or tried,” Strauss advised. “Pertaining to Karen Maxwell and the Peugeots, the Commonwealth can offer testimony of the crimes committed during flight, to show the defendant's state of mind, consciousness of guilt.”

Strauss removed his glasses and leaned forward before starting again, speaking extemporaneously. “Every fact which will aid in passing a proper judgment is relevant, not only the facts of the crime involved but every bit of trustworthy information that will aid in determining the type of individual to be sentenced [“My darling Diane, Don't pity me. What I did I would do again if it came to it.”] … and this is mandatory when the decision involves a possible imposition of death.”

Strauss raised his hands to shoulder level, palms cupped as if weighing two grapefruits, then spoke with patience and common sense. “Certainly, therefore, evidence of a defendant's other crimes, consisting of his own freely made admissions, even though the crimes were committed after the crime on trial, is relevant, important for the jury to consider what manner of man the defendant is on the day the awesome decision must be made whether he should live or die.” [“Dear Diane,” wrote Hoss, “one more thing I heard at my trial and I almost broke out laughing, was when that cop stopped that bullet the people said he started to pray. How do you like that? All those big bad cops punk out at the end. I sleep like a baby at night.”]

The motion for a new trial was denied, clearing the way for the formal sentencing of Stanley Hoss.

With the usual high security, Sheriff Coon's men transported Hoss to Pittsburgh's courthouse from the penitentiary, then escorted him to Courtroom Number 3, newly renovated with gold-toned carpeting and lowered ceiling. As with Hoss's other court appearances, faces filled windows and bodies crowded the hallways but there was strict order.

On this September 18, 1970, one year less a day since Officer Joe Zanella was killed, spectators watched Hoss enter, dressed in a dark suit and tie with a pastel shirt. He'd evidently decided on a haircut; his hair was combed forward in the front while the sides were slicked back, calling to mind a fifties rocker rather than a Rolling Stone.

Judge Strauss knew well the type of individual before him but, as a God-fearing Christian, he took no joy in this profound moment. Strauss listened to prosecutor Ted Fagan ask pro forma that the court impose the sentence of death, as decreed by the jury.

Strauss asked Hoss if he had anything to say. Even those close by strained to hear as Hoss answered, “I have nothing to say.” With that, Strauss read a prepared statement, that Hoss would suffer death during a week fixed by the governor, and ended with, “May God in his infinite wisdom have mercy on your soul.” There was no enigmatic smile this time from the condemned
man. Some said they swore Hoss gulped at Strauss's last words, but his eyes remained stony.

With the sentence a foregone conclusion, Snyder and Baxter continued to fight for Hoss, announcing that they'd appeal to the commonwealth's Supreme Court. Other legal matters cluttered Hoss's file, including multiple detainers for crimes he'd committed on the run, but most significantly the looming trial in Maryland for the kidnapping of Linda and Lori Mae Peugeot. Prudence would advise Hoss to delay extradition to Maryland at all costs, yet weeks earlier, an unadvised, untutored Stanley Hoss had written to the Maryland courts demanding a speedy trial.

. . .

On the one-year anniversary of the Peugeots' kidnapping, journalist Steve Morrow visited with Linda's mother, Edna Thompson. It had been many months since he had last seen her. The mignonne woman appeared even smaller, with thinner hair and paler skin. Morrow was also struck by the hollowness in Edna's eyes, a frightening vacancy. Edna sadly recalled her daughter's and granddaughter's disappearance.