by Larry Crane
“From the transcript, it seemed as if you were pretty cool on the stand.”
“I was shaking. I was sure I’d forget something that would make a mess of things—say something that would back up what Eddie said happened. And then Selser comes up with this old woman who lives by the bridge on Pulis Avenue who swore on the stand that she saw me poking around in the woods there, looking for something. She pointed me out in the courtroom. Selser figured I went looking for Ed’s bloody pants there, and that I found them where he said he threw them. Then supposedly I took them over to Oak Street and threw them in the woods where the cops found them.
“If that was true, it was really impossible for me to explain away. I swore on the stand that I never saw the woman in my life. It was a lie. I did go looking for the pants, but they weren’t there. I saw her when she saw me. I lied in court. If the jury believed I lied that once, they could believe I lied even more. I was scared shitless. I would have killed myself rather than go to jail.”
His weaknesses and flaws were very much like those of Edgar Smith. He liked to tweak people for fun. He had a violent temper at times. He had been in the military and had been discharged with some kind of disability that questioned his character. He had trouble getting and holding a job for any length of time.
“Do you remember the private investigator, Andrew Nicol?”
“I still dream about him. It’ll never go away.”
“Did he ask you questions?”
“Yes. Very early on in this whole mess, he approached me at the Wyckoff Pharmacy. Asked me a bunch of harmless questions, like he was just some interested bystander with no official qualifications or anything, but then he revealed he was an investigator and that made him somebody who somehow had the right to ask me things. What right did he have to ask me anything? None. But I didn’t know that. This was immediately after Eddie was thrown in jail and charged with murder.”
“Before Smith said anything about you being implicated?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember what he asked you?”
“Yeah, stuff like did I know Vickie, and who were the guys that hung out at Tony’s Amoco.”
“Innocuous stuff.”
“Right, whatever that means. Then, as time goes by people start telling me about this creepy guy who’s sticking his nose into every corner of the town—talking to Tony at the gas station about me—questioning all the people at the drugstore—spending a lot of time at Pelzer’s bar asking what time I got there that night, and who else was there—all that kind of stuff. What I think is Eddie was sitting in the county jail cooking up his stories about me being at the sandpit with Vickie and passing it all along to his lawyer who’s passing it all along to Nicol to check up on.
“So, this harmless little chat with this guy starts growing and growing, and pretty soon I’m finding myself stuck in a net they’re dragging along behind them through the mud with all kinds of people saying I was in places I wasn’t, and saying things I never said. Rumors are flying all over town and in the newspapers. People are looking at me crazy, even my supposed-to-be-friends.”
Human nature can be deadly, she thought. Someone gets in trouble and they immediately start casting around for explanations that exonerate them and they even start blaming others, sometimes the people who are supposed to be their friends. Smith at one point in his questioning said something like: “If you’re looking for a fall guy, talk to Hommell. He was Vickie’s boyfriend.”
Then after he was indicted and in jail awaiting trial, Smith had time enough to fabricate an entire scenario that implicated Hommell, placing him in the sandpit with Vickie. It was insidious. People do despicable things when the noose is tightening around their own neck.
Hommell stepped down off the bench. “Want to walk a little?” he asked. He turned and sauntered away down the long sidewalk with his back to the sun.
“He wrote a novel. Did you know that?” she asked, as she came up behind him.
“I guess I knew. I didn’t read it. The farther away I can get from him, the better off I’ll be. Down here, people are only vaguely familiar with any of it, and that’s fine with me.”
“It’s called A Reasonable Doubt. It came out a couple of years ago, and a lot of people bought it. The novel was something of a best seller. It’s a story about the murder of a promiscuous teenage girl in small-town New Jersey. It’s all about a clutch of ‘older guys who hang out in a gas station watching TV, a closely knit group the likes of whom are to be found in every community, whose main interests in life are girls, cars, and beer—the restless, the immature, unskilled dropouts from school and society.’1
“There’s this guy Ron Kramer, a slightly built twenty-one-year-old, with blond hair, ice-cold gray eyes, a smooth, beardless complexion, and a temper quicker to erupt and more violent than any other in town. He sells pictures of young girls and takes megalomaniacal delight from having them subservient to him.2 I figure, that’s you.
“And there’s this another guy, Jerry Bender. That’s Edgar Smith. He joined the Army at eighteen and always knew where he was and what his alternatives were.3
“It’s a long book that paints just the kind of picture of Ramsey and the people who live there that Smith wants the world to believe existed in 1957 when the girl in the novel died at the hands of either the Kramer or the Bender character, take your pick. He’s a pretty good writer, and he’s got enough perseverance to get all those words on paper. But, there’s more to it. He had the threat of execution hanging over his head constantly. He must have known that writing a novel would be helpful to him. So, he created this fictional situation that every reader compares to his actual experience. It’s an ingenious way to manipulate opinion about him.”
“You have to hand it to Eddie. He was smarter than all of us put together,” Hommell said.
Marcella looked toward the water and saw a glint of sunlight reflecting off the curl of a wave as it washed up—the disk again—and saw Hannah sitting at the edge of the sea, with the warm water playing over her feet, digging in the sand.
* * *
1 Smith, Edgar. A Reasonable Doubt. (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970), 134.
2 Ibid., 39.
3 Ibid., 81.
Chapter 32
Sol Beidermann permitted her to enter his ink castle again. He looked up from the stack of stories on his desk and leaned back in his leather swivel chair while sliding his glasses from the bridge of his nose to his forehead. He then reached for the cigarette that smoldered in a large glass ashtray heaped with butts and stared at Marcella.
“You’re back. Your piece was a winner. We got nine letters to the editor about it. Six favorable. I don’t care about how many raves you get. It’s all in the feedback. We rarely get more than three on anything we print. You’re right. The Smith case is red-hot.”
The people in the county, and all over in the state at the time, were thirsty for any kind of information, she thought. Now, it’s all coming back. And it hasn’t lost any of its interest. How could it not. It was the scariest situation a girl can ever find herself in. It was on everyone’s mind. The closer you are to the actual spot where it happened the more real and immediate it becomes. Then add in a trial where all the details come pouring out. It never loses its appeal, even fourteen years later. Mothers and fathers look at their daughters and shudder at the thought that it could have been her. Mothers like me.
“We’re running your piece on Judge Grany’s dissenting opinion on the voluntariness of Smith’s statement to the police next,” Beidermann said. “Good work.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Beidermann slid his glasses back down to his nose and dug into his stack of stories.
She closed the door behind her.
Edgar Smith Case File
by Marcella Armand – Staff Reporter
Was Edgar Smith’s Statement to Police Voluntary?
The sensational Edgar Smith murder trial that rocked Bergen County in 1957 and sent
Smith to death row at Trenton State Prison is back in the news as subsequent Supreme Court interpretations shed new light on the case that may set Smith free.
In Smith’s testimony under oath at his trial in Hackensack, every answer he gave to Prosecutor Guy Calissi’s questions was checked against the statement he made to detectives after he had been detained on March 6, 1957. The statement was at the core of New Jersey’s case against him. He was convicted. Subsequently, Smith claimed in an appeal to The US Court of Appeals in 1963 that his statement was not voluntary and should be thrown out. The Court denied the appeal, two judges concurring, one dissenting.1
Judge Grany dissented from the opinion of the other two judges. He conceded that the statement was a confession, but it was obtained from “an overweary, distraught mind after hours of questioning.” Later, Smith was prompted by a detective to read the statement and comment favorably on its accuracy. That was enough under the law of New Jersey where it is unnecessary that a person sign a confession to make it valid. In Grany’s opinion it was a “shabby piece of police work that the US Court of Appeals should not sanction or permit to go unchallenged.”
He followed up this opinion with the facts as he saw them—that from 8:00 a.m. on the morning of March 5, 1957, until 3:45 p.m. on March 6, 1957—almost thirty-two hours—Smith had no sleep with the exception of a couple of hours before he was taken from his bed and placed in custody. He was interrogated in relays by the authorities all through the night. He was “taken to various places to check his alibis in freezing weather with only a T-shirt on.” He was given a light breakfast, and then “stripped and examined by a doctor” and questioned even more until “he broke down completely and cried and asked for a Catholic priest.”
The two concurring judges saw the facts differently. They said that “while police brawn and bluster to extort confessions cannot be a substitute for brains and legwork and will not be countenanced, it is in the public interest that police interrogation be allowed as long as it is conducted fairly, reasonably, and within proper limits that include full consideration of the rights of the person being questioned.”
They found no evidence of duress or persuasion, inducement or promises—no evidence of either physical or mental duress of any kind upon the defendant. In his own words, during his apprehension and questioning everything was done for his convenience and comfort—that he was not under any pressure either mental or physical. The statement was voluntary.
“Reasonable means needed to make the questioning effective” must be conceded to the police. Often prolongation of the interrogation period is essential, so that a suspect’s story can be checked and, if it proves untrue, he can be confronted with a lie; if true, released without charge.
This case involved complications that demanded proper attention. The authorities had a solemn responsibility to the dead girl, to Smith and any other possible suspect or suspects, to the community, to themselves. They were faced with the age-old police problem of not prematurely charging a reputable citizen when there were no eye witnesses, where the citizen protests his innocence and offers alibis. The police were solely interested in obtaining the truth. They acted soundly, with necessary deliberation, and with due regard for his fundamental rights.
There is a big difference between the law in state courts and that in federal courts. In connection with this—prompt arraignment—the right to be silent—the right to consult counsel all are closely connected to the period of interrogation to which a defendant legitimately may be subjected and is applicable only to the federal courts. So, while Smith’s interrogation and the nature of his statement were in compliance with New Jersey state law, they were questionable when measured against federal statutes.
* * *
1 US Court of Appeals for Third Circuit, 322F.2d810(33dCir.1963), Decided July 24, 1963
Chapter 33
Smith leaned back with one leg crossed over the other on the backless wooden bench in the family visiting area with a newspaper spread open in his hands as she approached from across the room. Was this casual demeanor calculated to put her in the right frame of mind for the message he would deliver when the time was right? After all, he left nothing to chance.
“There’s not a newspaper or magazine out there that can resist the story. I was right,” she said.
“Yes,” Smith said, looking up. “Nobody, period, can resist you out there or in here either.”
It’s all practiced, she thought. He saw me come in from a long way off. He’s had plenty of time to settle into the pose and the delivery he’s choreographed in his cell.
“It’s not me they’re interested in. The story has a fascination to it. So, let’s get to work. Who should I be seeing next?” she said.
“I think we should work on finding some way for you to stay right here with me,” he said.
“Oh sure, Edgar. That’s definitely what we should do.”
“You laugh. It would be the biggest story yet. ‘Socialite stows away in death row prison cell.’”
“Edgar, let’s just—”
“So, they exaggerate a little.”
“I suggest I go see your old defense counsel, the first one. What was his name? It started with a G,” I said.
“Gaudielle. Stay in here with me. Here’s the plan. We call the guard, clunk him over the head with your purse. You take his clothes and there you have it. You and I together, inside.”
“And the guard goes over the wall dressed like me for some reason. It’ll never work. Besides, he’s no size ten.”
Had he actually fantasized that we would be together somewhere? It was impossible to tell with him. After all the time he’s spent in solitary confinement, all the midnight masturbating to visions that had no chance in the world of ever coming to fruition, wouldn’t that have deadened him? Nothing deadens him. How much contact with a woman has he had over the last many years? Zero. He paints this picture, a Laurel and Hardy black-and-white movie from the forties. It’s meant to lighten things up, bring a smile to my face. In his mind he’s projecting to a time he believes will actually come—not all that far in the future.
“Come here,” he said.
“Have you read any of my articles?”
“Did you bring one?
“Come on. You go through four or five papers from cover to cover every day,” she said.
“I like the stuff on Donald Hommell. You nailed his lying ass,” Smith said.
“You mean the boozy barkeep Pelzer’s testimony1 that never made it into the courtroom—the story Nicol dredged up way back in the beginning—that Hommell lied when he said he was in Pelzer’s Bar at the time you said he was in the sandpit? Nothing new. It’s Hommell’s word against Pelzer’s, and Pelzer is far from convincing. But, of course, you like it—it’s new evidence you could use to appeal the verdict—Hommell’s every step back then, timed to the minute. To the skeptic, it’s more than a stretch—too precise. It’s better to leave it a little loosey-goosey, don’t you think? Just so it seems more like what happens in real life?”
“Donald Hommell. I said it in the book. He was the last one to see her alive. She was his girl, or he thought she was,” Edgar said.
“Where are your notes?”
“Right up here,” he said, poking his temple.
“I can’t read them up there. Are there really any notes?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been a bad boy.”
“Tell me, then.”
“Tell you what?”
“What we talked about. Your thoughts on the Miranda line. Give me some details to work with.”
“Come here,” he said.
“Stay there.”
“Okay. Miranda. You’re right. I was given no warning about my rights. I was held without benefit of counsel. They took away my clothes for examination, they said. Kept me up all night, sitting around in my underwear. Brought in my wife. Held us apart, hinting that—that she was in her underwear too.”
“Did that actually happen? They had
her in her underwear? That didn’t happen, did it?”
“Why do you ask me something like that—did it actually happen? I said it happened. It did happen. Damn straight.”
“Are you sure? Calissi’s crew kept a very detailed account of what happened, all written down neat and clean. No anecdotal, encyclopedic memory baloney. It is a dynamite story though. We would need to verify it, that’s all. Who can corroborate? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I just get down sometimes. It’s a weakness I have. You wouldn’t know anything about that—you who has no weakness.”
“Are you making that up? The underwear? Your wife—she moved to Harrisburg. Is she someone I should be seeing?” she said.
“She divorced me and remarried. They moved. What else do you want to know?”
“It’s not ‘what else do I want to know.’”
“No. It’s details. All right. She came a lot during the first year. We both believed it would be just a couple of months, and they would see the error of their ways. I had my appeal. But then, winter came again with roads too icy to travel, and it was hard to bring the baby. I was so accepting of her alibis for not coming because I needed to have her keep it up—keep up her faith in me.”
What’s this: ‘accepting of her alibis’? Sounds like Gavin. Don’t question anything she says about coming to visit or not coming because then it all stays up in the air, unresolved—and that’s better because if he did drill in to the truth, he’d have to live with the truth, and it might be that she doesn’t want to come visit any more, doesn’t want that picture thundering down to the ground in pieces where he would have to face up to it. I’m no better. Confess the kiss and keep the rumpus room far, far from the light of day. Smith’s wife—she actually loved him—at least at some point she did. As time went on, she could see that their life together was dead, and she needed to focus on herself.
