“I was afraid he might pull something like this,” GraBois fumed. When he got worked up, he would put one hand on his hip and run the other one through the hair at his temples. “What a punk. Here he is with this opportunity, and now this little kid’s scared him out of his wits. But I have a backup plan.” He quickly explained.
“Will that work?” Barton had never heard of this before.
“We do it in the federal system. So I don’t know why we shouldn’t be able to here.”
They walked back into the hearing room.
“Your Honor,” GraBois addressed Judge Hunter. “The Commonwealth would request that we be allowed to take depositions from the witnesses who are present here.”
Judge Hunter looked perplexed. He had never heard of this either. Depositions were for civil cases.
“You want them to testify, or what?”
“Yes, sir, under oath, be allowed to depose them at this time on the record for the purposes of preserving the testimony.”
“I think,” Bonavita piped up, “that is out of the realm of your jurisdiction.”
“It sure is,” the judge agreed, looking relieved someone else had said it first.
Marylou Barton felt like she’d had the air knocked out of her. This was all quite extraordinary. Depositions were never taken before trial in a criminal case in Pennsylvania, unless a witness was dying. But GraBois had been undeterred and he’d approached the judge once the hearing was adjourned. He was going to act on the presumption that he had a right to stay and depose the Rainbows. These folks move around, he’d argued. They don’t have phones; they’re hard to reach. We may never get them back here, and the prosecution can’t afford to lose their testimony. Ramos had been taken back to his cell, the room had been cleared of spectators and press, and the judge wasn’t needed. Only the defense attorney stayed in the room, although as far as GraBois was concerned, if Bonavita had protested, he was welcome to leave and forfeit his opportunity to cross-examine on the record. But he could never claim he hadn’t been given that chance.
Barton had no idea if any of this was even legal, but GraBois seemed to know what he was talking about. I guess we’ll just do it and ask forgiveness later, she thought, retaking her seat.
“You okay, champ?” GraBois looked down at Joey. He explained the change in plans to the Taylors and Barry Adams.
“I’m going to ask you all the same questions, but it’s actually going to be easier, because the judge won’t be there, and more importantly Jose isn’t going to be there, so you can take it easy.”
Joey already looked more relaxed than when he’d first walked into the courtroom. Whether it was Ramos’s absence or the shot in the arm of watching GraBois cop an attitude with the defense, he had assumed a cool, composed game face.
GraBois squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s go get ’em,” he said.
“We call Joseph Benjamin Taylor Jr.”
Joey stood up and moved just a few feet away to a witness chair near the now empty judge’s bench. He raised his hand and was sworn in.
“Do you know what that means, swearing to tell the truth?” GraBois began the well-rehearsed set of questions.
“It means tell the truth, not tell a lie.”
“Do you know what a lie is?”
“It’s not to tell the truth.”
“If you told a lie in this courtroom today, would something happen to you?”
“Yes,” Joey said. “I would probably be punished.”
“Do you remember my asking you questions or asking you anything?”
“To tell you what Jose did.”
“Did I tell you what happened, or did you tell me what happened?”
“I told you what happened.”
“Did I tell you anything at all?”
“To tell the truth.”
It took only a few minutes to get to the hard part.
“Joey, did anything bad happen to you on that bus with the man you then knew as Michael and you later learned was Jose, the man you saw today in this court?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us in your own words what happened to you?”
Joey didn’t hesitate, he didn’t look down, and he used all the words. “He stuck his penis in my butt, and he stuck his mouth on my penis, and he stuck my mouth on his penis.”
“Now, you mentioned butt. What do you mean by butt?”
“My behind.”
“I have no further questions.” GraBois gave Joey a look of encouragement and ceded the witness to Tom Bonavita.
His cross-examination was even shorter, for the most part a series of questions about whether Joey had been coached, and who might have coached him. Joey himself was firm and consistent. He fidgeted a little, and shuffled his feet, but otherwise looked at ease throughout, answering questions about his attacker.
“Can you describe him for me? What did he look like?”
“He had a little bit longer hair than he did now. It was still black, and he had brown eyes. I can’t describe any clothes, because I don’t remember what kind of clothes he wore.”
GraBois was impressed. Joey wasn’t going to say anything he didn’t know for sure. All this preparation had paid off.
“Do you remember if he had a beard?”
“Yes.”
“You are definitely sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“You are absolutely certain that the person that you saw today was the person four or five years ago?”
“Yes.”
When the cross ended, GraBois rose again for another short round of redirect. He wanted to establish that each separate “bad” act, as he called them, had happened multiple times. He wanted Bonavita to go back and tell his client that the prosecution had hinted at additional charges.
“So for the purposes of the record, what you described about the penis and the behind, that happened more than once?”
“Yes.”
“The fact that he put his penis into your mouth, and you put your penis into his mouth, happened more than one time?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain how many times?”
“No, I am not.”
“But are you certain it was more than once?”
“Yes.”
“No further questions.”
“Is it over?” Joey asked. Barry Adams had also been deposed and now they were all packing up to leave the courthouse.
“For now,” GraBois said. “There’s still the trial, if it comes to that. But I wouldn’t worry too much. You all did just great.”
It could not have gone better if Jose Ramos hadn’t waived the hearing. Now, if the Taylors dropped out of sight tomorrow, Joey’s testimony was forever preserved, and could be used in trial. Even without the suppressed confession that had torpedoed this case the first time around, GraBois had no doubt they were in good shape. But exactly one hour after the hearing ended, the evidence suddenly got even stronger, when a handwritten letter arrived in the office of Judge Robert L. Wolfe, who was slated to preside over the trial. The letter was from Jose Ramos, begging the judge to stop GraBois, in consideration of Joey and the suffering a trial would cause him. Ramos had written the letter two days earlier, with no way to know he’d soon be facing Joey Taylor himself, and that Joey would breeze through his testimony.
“I am asking your Honor that you not make the child who had sex with me go through the experience all over again in your Court Room. I didn’t force this child to commit these acts with me, and I didn’t force myself on this child.”
In his convoluted ten-page plea to dismiss the case, Jose Ramos had just made a full confession, this time directly to the judge.
CHAPTER 19
Done Deal
Howdy,
Along about a year ago, I was preparing to travel to New York to answer witness concerning evidence on Jose Antonio Ramos. I was spending some time with my children explaining to them the reasons I was going. My son, 14 years old, listened f
or awhile, went into his room and returned with a small Star Wars figurine. He said, “Dad, I got this from that guy, at the Gathering.” (Meaning Ramos, in 1986, in Pennsylvania.) Looking at the Star Wars Figure, a chill ran up and down my spine. I realized how close it could have been to Ramos pursuing his aims with my son. It scared me then, and it scares me now.
—November 19, 1990, victim impact statement from Rainbow Barry “Plunker” Adams
Two months later GraBois was en route to Warren yet again. It was his third trip there in as many months, flying west to connect through Buffalo before a shorter flight south to Jamestown, New York. From there it was a forty-five-minute drive across the Pennsylvania border to the Warren Holiday Inn where he was now greeted by name.
The interim weeks had seen an arraignment hearing on August 31, where Ramos had—predictably—pled not guilty. GraBois had used the opportunity to reveal in court that the prosecution was considering filing a third felony count, arguing that since two different kinds of oral rape had occurred, both giving and receiving, they could be charged separately. A conviction on all three counts could bring a maximum sentence of sixty years. Afterwards, defense attorney Tom Bonavita told the press he saw this as a clear ploy to pressure Ramos on the Patz case.
GraBois wouldn’t deny the New York case was never far from his mind, and he kept the Patzes updated on his comings and goings to Warren. Stan always had a noncommittal “wait and see” reaction to the idea that Pennsylvania would crack his son’s case, but GraBois remained optimistic. If his prime suspect were to buckle under such pressure and cough up more on the Patz case, well, that would be ideal. If the prospect of sixty years convinced Ramos to plead guilty on the Joey Taylor case, that was good too. GraBois hoped on this trip the Warren public defender would be willing to talk plea. Both he and Marylou Barton were open to that, but so far the defense didn’t seem ready—during the hearing that had brought the prosecutors to Warren, Judge Wolfe would rule on a long list of motions Tom Bonavita had filed to derail the prosecution’s case altogether.
GraBois’s flight out of LaGuardia landed in Buffalo, where he’d change planes for the twenty-minute hop to Jamestown, and he walked over to the gate. He was the only passenger there. He assumed the flight had been canceled because of the nasty fog cover that had made landing in Buffalo difficult enough. He walked to the counter to reschedule, but was told the thirty-seater was due out on time. “Then where are the other passengers?” he asked the attendant. “Oh, they’ve canceled,” was her reply. “What about the fog?” asked GraBois. “Not a problem,” she assured him. “The pilot flies strictly by electronic navigation.”
GraBois was scheduled to interview eight potential witnesses as soon as he arrived at the Warren Holiday Inn, mostly state troopers who would have taken time off from work. Barton was driving from Harrisburg, and GraBois couldn’t afford to get behind schedule. He was also looking forward to his regular confrontation with Ramos the next day. Every time GraBois saw the man, it fueled the fire in his belly. So they boarded the plane, just he and the pilot, who had to rearrange GraBois’s seat assignment to distribute the weight properly.
Airborne, the prosecutor mapped out his next few days, going through notes to prep for his witnesses. He liked to make efficient use of travel time; he’d been on the road repeatedly in the past months. The previous week he’d flown to San Diego to question one of Ramos’s constant companions during the seventies, a man who called himself “Cochise” and favored swathing himself in pink fabric. Cochise claimed to have found religon and given up his unsavory past associations; he’d married and settled down with his wife out west, where GraBois’s investigators had finally tracked him down. The interview had netted little new information. Cochise denied any knowledge of Ramos as a pedophile. Toward the end of the disappointing session, however, Cochise’s wife had made an offhand reference to the journals Ramos often kept close at hand. She remembered him holding the books up to his face as he wrote, and how he would fill each page with cramped spidery handwriting,
Diaries were a trademark pedophile accessory. Child molesters were known to keep detailed accounts of their victims, compulsively cataloging descriptions and ages, dates of the abuse, even the sexual acts in great detail, to pore over afterwards. Could Ramos have recorded his crimes too? GraBois immediately worked his way through the chain of custody in Pennsylvania looking for Ramos’s belongings, which led him to Himes Sales and Auto Wrecking. Tim Reitz had worked in the shop for years, and he’d be happy to come meet with the prosecutor when he got to Warren.
Yes, Reitz confirmed on the phone, they’d cleaned out the bus and disposed of Ramos’s property, nothing but a bunch of old garbage. And yes, come to think of it, there had been a book. He thought some more and recalled a hard-covered eleven-by-fourteen notebook with the word “Journal” stamped on it. Reitz had found it in a pile on the floor of the bus, and had shown it to his boss, Carl Reese. They’d flipped through, scanning the indecipherable notes. On one page, Reitz distinctly remembered, the writer talked of sitting by a fire with a group of other people, but then the handwriting abruptly changed. Guy must have taken drugs, the two men surmised, and this is where they kicked in. They couldn’t make any sense of the chaotic, childish block letters after that. They talked about what to do with the journal, and briefly considered calling the state police barracks before deciding that since the authorities had already combed the bus, they must have kept what they’d wanted. So they threw the book on the fire with the rest of the junk.
GraBois looked out the airplane window and saw nothing but dense white fog. It was exactly how he’d felt when he’d heard the journal was gone. It had taken a long, painful moment before his mind had cleared. Now he realized they were an hour into what was supposed to be a twenty-minute flight. Something was wrong. Almost at the same moment, the pilot spoke to him through the doorless opening separating the cockpit from the cabin.
“Sir, I believe we have a problem.” GraBois waited. “I can’t find the airport.”
“Well, that is a problem.” Apparently, it was one thing to fly by electronics, but to land you had to actually see the airport. GraBois asked about returning to Buffalo and learned there wasn’t enough fuel to make it back. The pilot’s best plan was to fly around a little while longer, hoping the fog would lift enough to afford a glimpse of the runway below. Knowing the limited prospects of that scenario, GraBois gripped his armrests and willed his life not to flash before his eyes.
“That son of a bitch,” GraBois found himself thinking. “What if he gets away with it now?” That one outrage, along with thoughts of his wife and children, distracted him for the long tense moments before the circling plane took a swift, almost vertical drop, to land with a thud that left him hobbled by back pain for days.
After the hearing the next day, GraBois and Barton stood in the hallway comparing notes. The defense had filed several motions, and only won one: Ramos’s million-dollar bail was cut in half—a hollow victory, since five hundred thousand dollars was still wildly prohibitive. Plus, in opposing Bonavita’s request for bail reduction, GraBois had seized the opportunity to paint Ramos as a serial pedophile, listing offenses dating back to 1971. This included, for the first time ever, an official confirmation of both Bennett Harmon’s molestation and the 90 percent confession linking Ramos to the abduction of Etan Patz.
“Ramos has also sodomized a five-year-old” GraBois had written in his response to Bonavita’s motion, “and has admitted to taking a 6-½ year old boy to his apartment on May 25th, 1979 for sexual purposes.”
Now Bonavita approached the two prosecutors and signaled he was ready to raise the prospect of a plea.
“What do you have in mind?” Bonavita asked them. The three went over the terms. While the prosecutors were adamant about not bargaining the charges down from Felony 1, they would be willing to drop the count of anal sex and agree not to file the additional count of oral sex. That left the single oral sex charge, which carried a min
imum mandatory five years, and a maximum of twenty.
Even though they were confident in their case, both prosecutors were also realists. While Stuart GraBois would have been happy to see Jose Ramos in jail on two counts for forty years—essentially a life sentence—he knew a trial was always a gamble. On the other hand, this plea agreement carried a stiff sentence, and it was a sure thing. Besides, by refusing to reduce the remaining charge, they might not have given up anything in the deal. Even if Ramos had been convicted on the two charges in the original indictment, there was a good chance the judge would have sentenced Ramos to concurrent prison terms—a two-for-one deal. In the meantime, a trial would force Joey Taylor back to Warren, and this time he’d have to tell his story in an open court full of press and spectators. The choice was clear.
GraBois and Barton wasted no time. They went immediately upstairs to the District Attorney’s Office and wrote up a letter outlining the plea. Putting the screws to Ramos, they gave him less than a week to make up his mind. If he met the deadline, they would be back in Warren ten days later to watch Ramos plead guilty. Otherwise, the trial would move forward, starting with jury selection on Monday, October 22.
GraBois arrived back in Warren the following week. This time, when he landed at the Buffalo airport, he rented a car and drove to Warren—no more puddle-jumper connections into Jamestown.
At the eleventh hour, Ramos had agreed to the prosecutor’s terms, and the next day he was scheduled to plead guilty to the Felony 1 oral sodomy of Joey Taylor. His change of plea hearing was set for 3:30, and some twenty minutes ahead of time, Jose Ramos was brought over to the courthouse from his cell next door. He’d cleaned up considerably from his first appearance, smooth-faced now except for a thick Pancho Villa mustache, his hair shorter and neatly groomed. A few minutes after he was locked into a grate-covered prisoner holding area off the courtroom, Tom Bonavita walked up to GraBois, looking chagrined.
After Etan Page 29
