Lethal Guardian (35 page)

When Hugh Keefe finished with Tricia Gaul, both sides argued outside the presence of the jury issues surrounding the state’s next witness, Joseph Jebran.

Indeed, Beth Ann’s former boyfriend, a man who had been there through it all, had filed for bankruptcy because of the debt he’d acquired while dating Beth Ann. Jebran had been accused of the alleged sexual abuse of Rebecca, and he was ready to explain just how obsessed Beth Ann had become with Rebecca.

The main thrust of the arguments centered on whether the jury would be allowed to hear about the alleged incident of sexual abuse in which Jebran had found himself entangled. There was never any proof that a sexual assault had ever taken place, and Jebran was never charged with a crime. Why even bring it up?

Judge Devlin ended up ruling that the incident had no bearing on the pending charges against Beth Ann, and statements alluding to it would not be allowed.

By Friday, March 1, 2002, Jebran was on the stand talking candidly about his relationship with Beth Ann—a relationship, he told the jury immediately, that included at one time an odd request.

“She asked me if I would take Rebecca with her and run away,” Joseph said in his heavy Middle Eastern accent.

Questioning Jebran was ASA Peter McShane. Young, soft-spoken and a bit passive, McShane had a direct style to his questioning. He had been involved since day one and had done much of the research in the case. At one point, McShane, a Connecticut native and Boston University graduate, even put together a rather large timeline that detailed the case from the day Rebecca was born until Beth Ann’s arrest.

McShane made a point to suggest that the kidnapping request came at around the same time that Cynthia Carpenter had dropped her custody case and was given weekend visitations with Rebecca. He wanted the jury to understand that losing the court battle was the final blow for Beth Ann, and, perhaps, the only option she felt she had left was to kidnap Rebecca and run away.

Keefe got a chance to question Jebran shortly before the lunch break, and he wasted little time trying to make a point that as a witness, Joseph Jebran should be viewed as a possible scorned lover. To show how much Jebran loved Beth Ann, Keefe submitted several letters and cards he’d written to her over the years. Was it possible that when Jebran found out she was having an affair with Clein, he set out to settle a score? Or maybe Beth Ann didn’t love Jebran in the way he wanted?

Either way, Joseph Jebran shouldn’t be trusted, Keefe preached.

To Kane and McShane, it was a ridiculous accusation—but one Keefe saw as an opportunity to create doubt. And doubt, when all was said and done, was the only thing Keefe and Knight had to prove.

Judge Devlin reprimanded Joseph Jebran for his bringing up the allegation of sexual abuse that Kim and Buzz had made against him. This happened after Keefe began questioning him after lunch about a statement he’d signed regarding the allegations. Jebran didn’t talk in too much detail about the allegations, but he alluded to them in front of the jury.

Without the jury present, the judge had ordered him earlier not to talk about it.

After hearing Jebran disobey Devlin’s earlier order, Keefe called for a mistrial. But Devlin denied it.

No harm, no foul.

Bonita Frasure, one of Clein’s former law partners, followed Joseph Jebran and began to present for the state’s attorney’s office the next phase of its case. Clein himself was going to be called within days, Kane and McShane promised, and Frasure’s testimony would begin to set up that part of the case.

Frasure gave the jury a quick account of Clein’s meeting with Mark Despres and Beth Ann Carpenter in Clein’s small office a few days before Christmas 1993, which would set in motion the conspiracy Beth Ann had initiated.

Over the period of the next week, the state’s attorney’s office presented several more witnesses who talked about how Clein had become both intimately and socially involved with Beth Ann. There wasn’t much Keefe and Knight could do to attack this portion of the state’s attorney’s office’s case besides try to play down the credibility of each witness. It was, after all, one person’s word against another’s. If Beth Ann wanted to contend that these people were all part of a larger conspiracy, well, she would have to get up on the stand and explain it for herself.

But as the end of February approached, there was still no indication regarding what she might do.

By March 7, the courtroom was buzzing about the one witness whom the state’s case, when it came down to it, hinged upon: Haiman Clein.

Only weeks shy of his sixty-first birthday, it was easy for the gallery to see when Clein arrived in court that the years hadn’t been good to him. Dressed in a white
Saturday Night Fever
–type dress jacket, rumpled shirt and shoddily pressed slacks, which made it obvious he hadn’t worn a suit in some time, Clein was overweight and old-looking, his skin gray and pasty. Since his flight from justice back in 1996, Clein had been confined to the comforts of Connecticut’s correctional system. Bonnie, his trusted wife, had divorced him in 1998, but still she stood by his side. Marilyn Rubitski, his trusted secretary, had also stood by him all these years, along with his daughter, Dara, and brother, Robert. Clein had rabbis supporting him and friends saying they couldn’t believe what he had gotten himself into. One man Clein had embezzled nearly $80,000 from, someone later said, had even mentioned how he couldn’t wait to buy Clein a drink once he was released from prison. Depending on whom one spoke to about Clein, he was a charmer, lawyer, friend, father, respected member of the community. Yet, others remained steadfast in their contempt, calling him an adulterer, co-conspirator in a murder, embezzler, liar, thief, alcohol and drug abuser, enthusiast of kinky sex that included prostituting his wife to friends and clients. He wasn’t a model citizen. He wasn’t a smart man. And he surely wasn’t the most credible witness one would hope to have heading into the homestretch of a murder case that was based largely on circumstantial evidence.

Nonetheless, Kane and McShane stood by their man and his accusations. They were going all the way with Clein. It hadn’t mattered what he had done in his life. What mattered was that he could have chosen to make up things in light of making himself look good and Beth Ann look bad, but he chose to tell it like he remembered it, even admitting much of his own criminal and morally corrupt behavior in the process. There were times when Clein could have, both Kane and McShane continued to preach, lied about certain aspects of the case and gotten away with it. But when he didn’t recall something, he simply said he didn’t recall. That, the state’s attorney’s office insisted, played a large role in his credibility as a witness.

After spending part of the morning of March 7 detailing his professional life, Clein began to testify in candid detail over the next two days about his intimate relationship with Beth Ann and the fact that she continually brought up the bitter battle for child custody between her family and Buzz and Kim. It was, Clein said on a number of occasions, at the forefront of their lives, both professionally and socially.

Then came one of the many damaging statements, Clein would tell the jury, Beth Ann had made regarding her desire to have Buzz killed: “As long as [Buzz] is alive,” Beth Ann told Clein one day, “…we’ll never get Rebecca.”

At one point, he even said that, early on, he had the impression Beth Ann had custody of Rebecca, not her parents or Kim.

As the day wore on, Clein continued to imply that Beth Ann was so anxious and worried about her niece’s welfare that the only option she thought she had left was murder—and, he said, she wanted him to find someone to do it.

After Beth Ann had initially mentioned she wanted Buzz murdered, Clein said, it became a daily topic of their conversations. When he had heard enough, and had become intimate with her over a holiday in Florida, he finally came up with the idea to hire Mark Despres.

During his first few days on the stand, the jury received a pretty good picture of how the entire murder-for-hire plot had been conceived. Clein spoke in great detail about the meetings that included him, Beth Ann and Mark Despres. He spoke of the money involved. How much he trusted Despres. How he explained to Despres, because he believed it himself, that Buzz was molesting Rebecca. As Clein spoke, jurors took notes and listened with deep curiosity. Here was a “professional” man who had employed Beth Ann, slept with her, took her out for expensive dinners and on expensive trips, explaining how she had set up this entire murder-for-hire plot.

It was extremely compelling anecdotal evidence to the fact that Beth Ann had played a role—indeed, a very
significant
role—in Buzz’s murder. She didn’t pull the trigger, but she pulled the strings. According to Clein, without her involvement, Buzz Clinton would still be alive.

Keefe would, of course, rip through Clein’s testimony like a paper shredder once he got the chance. Keefe had already said in court on several occasions that Clein was nothing more than a liar and thief, and he had cut a deal with the state’s attorney’s office to save his life.

These were valid points. When it came down to it, by the end of the day on Friday, the jury had heard only half the story. In fact, the jury hadn’t even yet heard that Clein had pleaded guilty already to his role in the murder and thus made an arrangement with the state’s attorney’s office to testify against Beth Ann in order to stave off the possibility of facing the death penalty himself—which certainly would weigh heavily on his credibility.

Even Judge Devlin wanted to make it clear.

“You haven’t heard everything by a long shot,” he reminded the jury before sending them home for a three-day break. “So please keep an open mind.”

It was sound advice from a competent judge who had handled the trial, now nearly a month old, in a dignified and professional manner.

The chatter around town throughout the weekend was that Clein was putting the final nails in Beth Ann’s coffin—and if she didn’t put herself on the stand and tell her side of the story, she didn’t have a chance.

Keefe and Knight had remained tight-lipped about what they and Beth Ann had discussed in private. A defendant can decide to take the stand at any time during his or her trial. There is nothing on the books making it mandatory for a defendant to announce to the prosecution beforehand that she intends to testify.

Kane, however, had a few more things to get out of Clein before releasing him to Hugh Keefe for cross-examination. And on March 12, when court resumed, Kane went over a few menial issues he thought he needed to remind the jury of and then posed one final question to Clein.

“Mr. Clein,” Kane asked, “can you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury why you hired Mark Despres to kill Buzz Clinton?”

“Beth asked me to,” an unemotional Clein said.

“Thank you. I have no further questions.”

Kane sat down next to Peter McShane and prepared for what many were predicting was going to be the lashing of a lifetime by an experienced and highly skilled defense attorney.

As Keefe stood slowly and began walking toward the bench, he put one hand in his pocket and looked down at the floor in a peaceful moment of resolve. Coming out of the gate with facts and disparaging critical analysis was something Keefe had built a reputation doing throughout the years; some maintained he’d mastered it with remarkable ease. If you were a shaky witness, you didn’t want Keefe breathing down your neck and pointing his guns at you. He could slash you apart with one sentence and, as he’d done with Tricia Gaul and several other witnesses, never let up.

“So, Mr. Clein,” Keefe said softly, looking up, “you
are
a murderer?”

Clein didn’t answer at first and, obviously, didn’t know that Keefe had in fact asked a question.

“That
was
a question,” Keefe stated.

“I have been convicted of murder, yes,” Clein answered. “Beth and I are murderers, correct,” he added sometime later.

To show the jury how repulsive Clein’s behavior had been throughout the years, Keefe listed some of them on a blackboard.

Kane objected, but it was quickly overruled.

Murderer. Forger. Thief. Tax evader. Adulterer. Drug user. An attorney who had violated his oath and responsibility to his clients by stealing their money. The list looked like a rap sheet from a career criminal. The real Haiman Clein was now being exposed.

Looking on, jurors took notes and shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. Here was, when it came down to it, a scofflaw of the worst kind who had graduated throughout the years from embezzlement to murder. Why believe
anything
he had to say?

Keefe was clever. No one denied him that. He never stuck to one specific topic too long. He liked to talk about an issue, then move on to something different. It helped to mix up a witness. If a witness was telling the truth, jumping from date to date or place to place wouldn’t make much difference; the truth was the truth. If he was lying, however, it would eventually reveal itself.

By day’s end, Keefe had made a few important issues clear—mainly, Clein had made an agreement with the state’s attorney’s office to testify against Beth Ann in order not only to save himself, but possibly to get less than the mandatory forty-five years in prison when he was later sentenced. In fact, Keefe got Clein to admit that the state’s attorney’s office hadn’t even filed charges against him for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his clients—charges, in fact, that could have sent Clein to prison for years.

Then it came time for what amounted to the most embarrassing part of Clein’s five days on the stand—the infamous love letters. The jury was about to find out that Clein was not, by a long shot, William Shakespeare, bleeding his heart out on paper to the one he loved.

Keefe had Clein read from a letter dated January 24, 1994. But as Clein got to the sexually explicit parts of the letter, Tara Knight called Keefe over to their table and whispered something in his ear.

Just then, Clein was asked to stop reading, and it was decided that the letter was a bit over the top for an open courtroom. The jury would be given the opportunity, it was agreed, to read it themselves.