The Bomb Maker's Son

by Robert Rotstein

  “Pleading the Fifth again, sir?”

  Reddick half stands but thinks better of it.

  “Any chance Ian Holzner attacked you because he was proactively defending Rachel O’Brien based on your history of brutally beating women?”

  “That’s enough, Ms. Diamond,” the judge says. “Any other areas with this witness?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Then sit down, counsel,” the judge says. “Does the US Attorney have any redirect?”

  Reddick shakes her head. It’s not that Adamson destroyed her case—who beat up whom in 1975 has little to do with whether Ian Holzner killed four people. But by trying to underscore Holzner’s violent nature, Reddick got greedy, and as a result, Lovely’s cross-examination has thrown her credibility and judgment in question. Just like most things in life, trials are as much about perception as truth.

  Adamson starts to leave the witness stand, but the judge says, “Stay where you are, sir. The jury is excused.”

  Judge Gibson waits for the jury to leave and then waggles his index finger at Adamson. “Before you go, I want to say that you are a pot, sir. A scorched, sooty pot! And you’ve come into my courtroom and called the kettle black. Unbecoming. Get out of my sight this minute.”

  Adamson stands down and walks toward the exit. As he passes, Holzner looks at him with venomous eyes. This time, Adamson returns the stare, and as soon as he catches Holzner’s eye, his hands begin to tremble, and a knee buckles. Even after all these years, he’s afraid of Ian Holzner—not just afraid, terrified.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It’s only lunchtime, and Reddick has already finished with Adamson, which means she either has another witness for the afternoon or she’ll rest her case and force me to begin mine. We wait for the gallery to file out. Frantz winks at Lovely and gives her a thumbs up. Lovely and I head for the attorneys lounge, ignoring the reporters lingering behind.

  “Wait.” She takes my arm, and we make a turn down the hall and go through a door marked Restricted. She leads me into a back corridor and up some stairs, to Holzner’s holding cell. I didn’t know the route existed. The marshal on duty lets us into what’s supposed to be a cell but is more like a conference room. A still-shackled Holzner is eating a half-peeled banana, the chains on his cuffs clinking with each bite. He stands when he sees us and flashes a rare smile.

  “Nice job, Lovely,” he says. “Adamson was always this—”

  She raises her arms and almost flails them in disgust. “I just came up to tell you that you make me sick. And don’t talk about your misspent youth. Some things are unforgivable.”

  Holzner clamps his jaw shut.

  “I’ll meet you in the attorneys lounge, Parker,” she says. “But first I have to go to the ladies room to scrub the filth off.” She turns and storms out the door, which has one of those slow-closing hinges that thwarts her three tries at slamming it. On another occasion, I’d laugh, but there’s nothing funny about this.

  “Do you agree with her that what I did so long ago is unforgivable?” Holzner asks.

  “That depends on what you did. I still don’t know.”

  When Reddick calls her next witness, an elderly man in the first row gets up and walks to the stand with the hobbling gait of a washed-up linebacker in need of dual hip replacements. His small, round head is perched on a brawny body. His name is Elias Roudebusch.

  After the clerk swears him in, Reddick asks, “What is your occupation?”

  “I’m a former Special Agent for the FBI. Retired.”

  “Did you play any role in the investigation of the December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five, bombing of the Veterans Administration at Playa Delta, California?”

  “Along with my partner Ralph Hilton, I was the agent in charge of the investigation.” The man’s voice is so rough, it sounds like he’s swallowed a wood rasp.

  “Please summarize for the jury your educational and job background.”

  The best witnesses prove the cliché that you shouldn’t judge books by their covers. Pleasant surprises win instant credibility. So it is with Elias Roudebusch. He graduated from Ohio State with a BA in sociology, enlisted in the army, served two tours of duty in Vietnam, and enrolled in Georgetown Law School, where he served as an editor of the law review and finished in the top ten percent of his class. After practicing criminal law at a large Washington, DC, firm, he joined the FBI. By 1975, he was a ranking agent in the Los Angeles office.

  He was on the witness list, and we’re well prepared for him. What more can he do but recapitulate what the jury has already heard from the other witnesses? He yet again quotes the Holzner-O’Brien Gang’s radical rhetoric, describes the crime scene, and confirms that Holzner was the only person who could assemble the type of bomb that exploded at the Playa Delta VA. He tries to rehabilitate Gladdie Giddens by insisting that she unequivocally identified Ian Holzner as the perpetrator. He speculates that the silver earring found at the scene belonged to one of Holzner’s many women. We can deal with all this testimony.

  But then Reddick asks, “Agent Roudebusch, did you ever hear a tape recording of the defendant in nineteen seventy-five?”

  “Yes. Many, as a matter of fact.”

  “In any of those tapes was Ian Holzner discussing the Playa Delta bombing?”

  There’s a click-clack of laptop keyboards and murmurs of surprise from the gallery. The jurors stay impassive: the magic of our legal system is that it causes ordinary citizens to osmotically internalize the essential principle that justice is stoic.

  “Objection, Your Honor, best-evidence rule, undue surprise,” I say, trying to sound unconcerned but doing a piss-poor job of it. The quaver in my voice and the trembling in my limbs aren’t caused by stage fright. That seems to have lifted in this trial, probably because I’m battling for my father’s life. I’m frightened because it sounds like Elias Roudebusch might ensure that Ian Holzner will die by lethal injection.

  “Overruled,” the judge says.

  “May we approach, Your Honor?” I ask.

  “Hurry it up, counsel.”

  We go to the bench and huddle around the court reporter.

  “Your Honor, the government provided no recording or any transcript of it. The tapes themselves are the best evidence of what’s on them. If they ever existed.”

  “Oh, they existed,” Reddick says.

  “If not the tapes, then transcripts made at the time. For Ms. Reddick to spring this on me now without a word of—”

  “There’s no undue surprise because we only learned about them last night while preparing Agent Roudebusch. The best-evidence rule doesn’t apply because the original recording has been lost and so have the transcripts. The agent’s testimony is the best evidence of what’s on those tapes. Rule of Evidence 1004.” It’s a good argument, all the more galling because though Reddick was a good student, she struggled in our evidence class. I helped her through it.

  “The objection is overruled,” the judge says. “The tape is missing, so he can testify to what was in it, to the best of his recollection.”

  “Your Honor, that’s crazy. Because the government commits negligence or worse and loses the tape, this witness will be permitted to testify all these years later about its contents?”

  “That’s my ruling, counsel. Go back to your table.”

  “Your Honor, may I be heard further?”

  “I’ve ruled, Mr. Stern. I’ll let the ‘crazy’ comment go this time.”

  “Your Honor, we were in your chambers this morning, and the least Ms. Reddick could’ve done was disclose to me that she intended to have this witness testify that—”

  “Step back, Mr. Stern, or we’ll have a problem. No, you’ll have a problem.”

  Once we’re back in place, Reddick says, “We were talking about tape recordings. In any of those tapes was Ian Holzner discussing the Playa Delta bombing?”

  “Yes, he was,” Roudebusch says.

  “Before telling us what you hea
rd on the tape, how did you learn about the recording?”

  “Pursuant to a valid warrant, we’d obtained the right to wiretap the telephone line of one Charles Sedgwick, a member of the Holzner-O’Brien collective. We consistently tape-recorded conversations that occurred via that telephone. The tape in question was recorded on the morning of December seventeenth, nineteen seventy-five, about six or seven hours before the Playa Delta bomb exploded.”

  “What happened to the original tape?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Somehow over the forty years it was lost. I understand the agency has searched high and low for it. As best as we’ve discerned, the original and copies were transported to the federal courthouse during the trial of Rachel O’Brien. Someone working in the clerk’s office probably destroyed the tape after trial when no one came to pick up the evidence. It was a screw-up. I wish we could find it.”

  “Who were the participants in the call?”

  “I believed the caller was Rachel O’Brien. On the other end of the line was a man we believed to be Charles Sedgwick.”

  “My original question to you related to Ian Holzner and his participation in a conversation about the bombing.”

  “Yes. There was a man’s voice in the background. My recollection of the tape is that Mr. Sedgwick called him Ian.”

  “What was said on the tape?”

  “The woman caller—whom I believed to be O’Brien—was very emotional. She said something about a bomb in a restroom. She seemed to be upset by the fact.”

  “What else did you hear?”

  “Sedgwick sounded like he was trying to keep the woman calm. He seemed surprised over what the woman who I believed to be O’Brien was saying. Sedgwick apparently covered the phone with his hand and said something about the bomb to the man I believed to be Ian Holzner. There were some raised voices, and then Sedgwick said, ‘Ian will handle it.’ Then one of the parties hung up, we don’t know which.”

  “That’s bullshit!” Holzner shouts. He stands and points his cuffed arms at Roudebusch. “It’s a lie, and you know it.” Then a three-quarter turn until he finds his daughter in the front row of the gallery. “Emily, it’s a lie. It never happened. I didn’t do this. I didn’t do what they say.”

  Emily nods, the rims of her eyes sparkling with tears.

  “Sit down, Mr. Holzner!” the judge says.

  Holzner points to Roudebusch again. “You’re a lying fascist pig!”

  “Marshals, sit the defendant down now, and if he won’t be quiet, drag him out of here.”

  “I object to that,” I say. “My client has a right to be present in court to confront witnesses like this man.”

  “Your objections are irritating me, counsel,” the judge says.

  “I’m sorry about that, Your Honor, but I’m going to make them for the record anyway.”

  The jurors look like guests at a dinner party where the host and hostess have started quarrelling with each other. One of the marshals takes a tentative step toward Holzner—he, too, wants this just to go away—but Holzner continues standing and glowering at Roudebusch. My father is committing suicide by jury trial.

  Emily stands and says in her fluty voice, “Sit down, Dad. Please.”

  He shakes his head slowly and says, “Dylan would’ve wanted me to—”

  “He wouldn’t have wanted any of this. So please sit.”

  He nods like a dazed man who claims he knows what day it is when he doesn’t. Then he almost falls into his chair. As he should have, he addressed his plea to Emily, his daughter. I’m not truly his son. But as his lawyer, I now believe that he’s innocent. Guilty men don’t behave the way he just did.

  None of which will help undo the damage he’s done by losing control and calling an esteemed FBI agent names. No matter that I believe his behavior proves his innocence—the jury will only notice the slur and the rage and the lack of respect for the judicial system. They would’ve expected him to make his case on the witness stand.

  Holzner looks left and then right as if he’s just become aware that he and Emily aren’t alone in the room. Acting strictly as his attorney, I go close to him and place my hand on his shoulder, then lean over and whisper, “You’ve just hurt yourself a lot more than Roudebusch did. I had this covered. The next time you want to destroy yourself at least wait until I’ve finished my cross-examination. Now, relax and be quiet.”

  When the room settles, Reddick says with a flourish, “Thank you, Agent Roudebusch. No further questions.”

  Lovely whispers that we should ask for a recess, but I don’t need it. I want to get at this guy as quickly as possible. I haven’t felt like this since before the stage fright hit me five years ago. I almost lunge at the lectern.

  “You said you ‘believed’ that the female voice on the tape was Rachel O’Brien, Agent Roudebusch?” I ask.

  “That’s right.”

  “You’d heard O’Brien’s voice before?”

  “Many times.”

  “But you’re not certain that it was O’Brien’s voice?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why is that?”

  He shrugs. “Technical difficulties. The tape was badly garbled.”

  This is one of those times on cross-examination where you have to push your luck. “And attempts at enhancing it didn’t make it better?”

  “That’s correct. Enhancement technology in the nineteen seventies wasn’t what it is now.”

  “So the FBI wasn’t even sure that it was Rachel O’Brien calling?”

  “That’s right. We believe the caller was using a pay phone on a busy street.” He looks at the jury. “For those of you too young to remember a pay phone, it was a telephone in a glass booth that you put coins in to make a call. Usually a very grimy glass booth.”

  Like a safety valve on a pressure cooker, the laughter releases much of the pent-up tension in the room. That’s too bad—I wanted to keep the room on edge.

  “But it sounded like O’Brien to me,” he adds.

  “Were you sure it was Charles Sedgwick who answered?”

  “Yes, it was clear enough from the timbre of his voice, though it was sometimes unclear what he was saying.”

  “You say you concluded that the second man on the tape was Ian Holzner because Charles Sedgwick said something about ‘Ian taking care of it’?”

  “That’s not my testimony. Sedgwick made that statement, but I concluded that it was Holzner because Sedgwick seemed to call the other man Ian.”

  “You just said seemed to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re not a hundred percent sure.”

  “No.”

  “Was there static on the tape?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hissing sounds?”

  “As I recall.”

  “And you said traffic noise?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And not only was the tape garbled, and there was traffic noise, but you said that Sedgwick apparently covered the phone with his hand when talking to this second man?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But despite the garbled tape and the muffled receiver and the traffic noise, you still believe the second man in the room was Ian Holzner?”

  He crosses his arms and sits back in his chair to convey finality. “Yes, I do.”

  I’m about to pass the witness when Lovely hands me a note, suggesting a question I don’t know the answer to, that ultimate risk on cross. Holzner’s core meltdown forces me to take the risk.

  “Was this tape recording used in Rachel O’Brien’s trial?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “You don’t recall or the recording wasn’t used.”

  “It wasn’t used.”

  “Why not?”

  “Objection,” Reddick says. “It calls for the witness to speculate about the reasons the attorneys—”

  “Overruled,” the judge says.

  “Do you know why the recording wasn’t used at the O’Brien trial,
Agent Roudebusch?” I ask.

  “Yes. Ralph Hilton and I had a disagreement about who was speaking on the tape.”

  “Which was?”

  “He didn’t think the other man was Ian Holzner. And . . .”

  “And what, sir?”

  “He didn’t believe the woman caller was Rachel O’Brien.”

  “You and he agreed on Charles Sedgwick?”

  “Yes, counselor. We agreed on that.”

  “Do you know if Ralph Hilton is still alive?”

  “Yes, sir. Ralph Hilton is retired and living in the Portland area with his daughter.”

  “Oregon or Maine?”

  “Oregon. His daughter and son-in-law own a vineyard.”

  “Ralph Hilton isn’t on the government’s witness list, is he?”

  “It’s my understanding that he’s not.”

  “I have no further questions,” I say.

  Roudebusch climbs down from the stand and leaves the courtroom. Once the jury is excused, I say, “The defense has a motion, Your Honor.”

  “The motion is granted,” the judge says. “How many days do you need, Mr. Stern? And keep your seat, Ms. Reddick.”

  “Given the travel, three days, Your Honor.”

  “Okay, Mr. Stern. You have three days to interview Ralph Hilton and Charles Sedgwick. For good cause shown, the motion to continue the trial is granted. Marshal, notify the jurors that they get a few days off.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  After rising in the ranks of the FBI and being promoted to headquarters in Washington, DC, former FBI Agent Ralph Hilton retired in the late 1980s and then publicly condemned a number of FBI practices that supposedly had been discontinued in the 1960s, including “black-bag operations”—breaking into and entering onto private property without a warrant, declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1972. Hilton claimed that the practice had continued under the Reagan administration, an allegation that was never proven. For years after, he served as a private consultant and taught classes on government and criminal justice at Pomona College, east of Los Angeles. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon.

  It’s December, rainy season—the locals say it’s always rainy season—and while it’s hardly pouring, there’s a steady drizzle that has the streets slick. Fortunately, Hilton doesn’t live far from the airport. I drive up a hill to Portland Northeast, an evolving neighborhood where the working class is being pushed out by an urban-professional gentry—rising stars at Intel and Nike—who are renovating the stately Cape Cod-style homes. The rain picks up, and worse, the intersections in Hilton’s neighborhood don’t have stop signs, so I have to move at a crawl.