The CBS Murders

by Hammer, Richard;

  25

  The shooter was gone, to the New York State penitentiary at Attica, to spend a hundred years in prison, never to see the outside world again as a free man. The man who had hired him, who had showed him the targets and had, in essence, supplied the bullets and aimed the weapon, remained in the limbo of the Metropolitan Correctional Center. How long he would remain there was a question. True, he had pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion. True, he had been sentenced to twenty-eight years. But that was the longest sentence for that kind of white-collar crime New York had ever seen, and there were many who thought that unless Irwin Margolies could be tried and convicted for his part in the murders, unless the evidence could be found to implicate him directly, an appeal would result in a sharp reduction of his sentence and he would soon walk the streets again, soon have in his grasp the millions he had done such deeds to attain.

  But where was the evidence, and how was it to be obtained? Donald Nash could supply it, of course. But he and Margolies were wrapped in a kind of unholy embrace. They had made a bargain of death and each would keep his part, for there was no gain to either in breaking it. Margolies had paid Nash for his work, had paid Nash’s legal fees, was supporting Nash’s family, and that was all that Nash wanted. So Nash would keep to his part and would say nothing. He had nothing to gain by talking. He was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, and the authorities could offer him nothing in exchange for his testimony, could not and would not reduce that sentence, could not and would not send him back to the streets a free man.

  If Margolies thought about it in the days following the end of the Nash trial, he must have been filled with growing confidence. He knew Nash would never talk. He was sure, too, of those others who knew what had happened and why. Would Madeleine Margolies turn on him? Unlikely. She was his wife. He had done much for her. He was doing all he could to protect and defend her in her misery. He would continue to do that, and he was sure he could count on her continued and undeviating loyalty. Would his brother-in-law, Scott Malen, talk? Unlikely. They were family, first of all, and families stuck together. Malen had already committed perjury before grand juries and had lied to prosecutors. If he changed his story, he could well be indicted for those lies, and the idea of prison did not sit well with that young man. And Malen was involved, certainly as an accessory after the fact. The implications of that ought to keep him silent.

  Would friend and lawyer Henry Oestericher turn on him? Not likely. Oestericher was too deeply involved, had been part of the fraud scheme from its inception to its end, through all its twists and turns, had been part of the murders from the first moment such an idea came to Margolies. And Oestericher had lied repeatedly, to grand juries and authorities. Thus his career as an attorney, his welfare, his very freedom, Margolies was sure, depended on his maintaining his silence, on his maintaining the fictions.

  Would Alberto Torres talk? He who had brought Nash and Margolies together, he who had seen Nash moments after the murders and knew about them? Unlikely—for he, too, had lied, and he was caught in those lies, and to tell the truth now would place him in danger, would brand him not only a perjurer but also an accessory after the fact to murder. Such a prospect, with its consequences, would not sit well with Torres, Margolies was convinced.

  And there were no others. If Nash and Madeleine and Malen and Oestericher and Torres held to their silence and to their lies, Margolies had nothing to fear.

  What Margolies did not count on was the willingness of the Manhattan district attorney to make deals to get him. For Waples and his superiors, for the cops, Margolies was the man they wanted, and they were willing to go to almost any lengths to get him. If that meant that Oestericher and Torres and Malen and anyone else, except Nash, went free, the price was worth paying if the end was Margolies where they thought he belonged.

  “On the conclusion of Donald Nash’s trial,” Chartrand says, “we now go back and we touch base with everybody that we had spoken to before, everybody that had stonewalled us before. Their attitude has now changed. Alberto Torres now tells us exactly what happened on the night of the murders, what Donald told him he had just done, and now he tells us about the approach by Oestericher and the introduction of Donald Nash to Irwin Margolies at Ike and Mike’s. And the only offering that he can give us as to why he had lied to us before was that he was afraid and that he really liked Donald, and in spite of his not telling us all of these things at that time, we still convicted Donald, so it didn’t make any difference now. And, he said, he had trouble sleeping and looking at his wife and looking at his grandchildren. So now he bares his soul.

  “Now, being aware of the introductions, of Nash and Oestericher and Margolies, we got back to Mr. Oestericher. And we make it quite clear, both through the New York district attorney and the federal prosecutor, that we are prepared to go ahead and include him in future indictments in the conspiracy to murder. We had talked to Mr. Oestericher many times before and he had always stonewalled us every time we brought him in. He’s an attorney and he has a very glib tongue and he’s a rather abrasive person. He talked to us to pacify us and then he’d say, ‘Am I being charged or can I leave?’ And we’d have to say, ‘Good-bye, sir.’ On one occasion, Augie Sanchez told him, ‘You can leave, but probably the next time I meet you I will put you in custody.’ And later on, Oestericher told us he had nightmares about Sanchez putting handcuffs on him. He was deathly afraid of Sanchez.

  “But now that we have heard Torres, the situation has changed, and we explain that to Oestericher. He, the lawyer, now hires a lawyer, and it devastated him that he has to pay a lawyer because he doesn’t have much, anyway. The lawyer agrees that it is in the best interest of justice if we can conclude a bargain and arrangements with his client so that Mr. Oestericher can freely tell us everything that he knows. And the arrangements are made and we conduct six consecutive Saturday interviews in his attorney’s office and he tells us from the very beginning of the fraud case, and he tells us of his conversations with Alberto Torres, and he tells us of Torres’s introduction of Donald to Irwin and the subsequent meetings of Irwin and Donald, and the conversations they held. He tells us many many things and we now have Irwin all wrapped up.”

  The bargain that was made with Oestericher was the classic one. He would be granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony. But, of course, there were a few other things that Oestericher had to agree to, as well, and the main one was an agreement to resign from the bar (had he not, he surely would have been disbarred). Similar bargains were struck with Torres and with Scott Malen.

  With the decisions by Oestericher, Torres, and Malen that it was time for some truth-telling, and with the additional information provided by the government informants at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Henry Adair and Vincent Calise, Waples went to a grand jury. On July 18, less than two months after Nash’s conviction, the jury handed down an indictment of Irwin Margolies on two counts of murder, for the killings of Margaret Barbera and Jenny Soo Chin, and one count of conspiracy to commit murder, that of David Blejwas. He was not indicted for the murders of the three CBS technicians since those were Nash’s doing and Margolies had not hired him for that purpose even though he had later paid him a little extra because of that trouble.

  Irwin Margolies was a very worried man that summer of 1983. His friends and allies had turned on him, and he could see little hope for his future. That was made increasingly clear to him during regular discussions at the district attorney’s office. “The arrangements are made,” Chartrand says, “that he will be brought but on occasions to the district attorney’s office to see if he wants to sit there with his attorney and chat. Of course, he does not want to chat, but still we remove him for those little trips. And all of the court orders are made out in my name. And the arrangements are made with the feds that I will be the person that will remove him from time to time. And on each occasion, it’s done by court order. And on the second visit there, I go up
and I get Irwin one more time and now I bring him down and Richie Bohan is waiting for me and Irwin says, ‘How are you, Mr. Bohan, how are you?’ Because Irwin is very familiar with Bohan and very familiar with Augie Sanchez. But apparently he does not know who I am. He has seen me at his home and he has seen me in court, but he does not know who I am. He thinks perhaps I am an FBI agent, but he isn’t sure. On this second trip down, Bohan says to me after we deliver him, ‘You’ll never believe this. He wants to know who the hell you are. He says he sees you all the time, you’re always around, but he don’t know who the hell you are.’ I say, ‘What the hell does he think? What did you say?’ Bohan says, ‘I said you’re a detective, you’re the guy that’s going to arrest him.’ Immediately thereafter, he knew who I was and he called me by name, Mr. Chartrand.”

  Those trips back and forth to the district attorney’s office gave Margolies an idea. If everything looked decidedly grim, then perhaps his one hope was escape. And then he heard rumors that an escape was actually being planned. In a nearby cell was a reputed organized-crime hit man named William Arico. Escape was one of Arico’s penchants. He had, some time before, managed to get out of the prison on Rikers Island, get out of the country, and, with a contract from convicted Italian financier-swindler Michele Sindona, head for Italy, where he murdered officials investigating the collapse of the Sindona empire. On his return to the United States, he was recaptured and locked up in the Metropolitan Correctional Center while Italian authorities worked for his extradition on those murder charges. Arico was planning another escape.

  When Margolies learned of the plan, he offered his help, financial and otherwise. The condition: When Arico was free, he was to intercept Margolies on one of those journeys between jail and the district attorney’s office and set him free. Unfortunately for Arico and Margolies, as Arico was going out the window at the prison with another inmate, the bed sheet they were climbing down didn’t hold. Arico fell. The other inmate fell on him. When the guards arrived, Arico was dead.

  Word of Margolies’s part in that aborted escape, and of his attempts to find somebody to replace Arico in his plans, got to Chartrand and other detectives. “We were extra cautious after that,” Chartrand says. “And I let Irwin know that if there was a problem, he would be the first to hit the street.”

  The trial of Irwin Margolies opened in Supreme Court in Manhattan before Justice Eve Preminger on May 4, 1984. This time Gregory Waples did not move slowly to establish the crimes the defendant was charged with. He brought out his heaviest weapons right from the start. Henry Oestericher appeared on a witness stand, a broken man, no longer a lawyer, abandoned and disowned by his family, deeply in debt, a man in disgrace. He had a tale to tell: “I participated in the homicides of the CBS employees and the murders of Margaret Barbera and Jenny Soo Chin.” In exchange for his testimony, “I was given full immunity.”

  He went through it all, the inception of the fraud, the talk of murder, the hiring of Nash, the murders themselves. He spared nothing, not even himself, while Margolies glared at him with unconcealed hatred.

  He was followed by Alberto Torres, and there was his story of finding Nash, of introducing Nash to Margolies, and of Nash’s revelations on the night of the killings.

  There was the private detective, Linwood Lewis, who told of being hired to follow Barbera and get incriminating evidence against her; there was testimony about the phone calls between Nash and Margolies and Oestericher; there was testimony from David Blejwas about threats made against him by Margolies.

  Scott Malen, with his grant of immunity, tied the knot even tighter around his brother-in-law as he told of paying Nash’s lawyer his legal fees and of his own part in the frauds.

  Waples even tried to win the testimony of Nash, but the convicted killer sat stonily on the stand and said he would plead the Fifth Amendment if asked any questions.

  There was little Margolies’s lawyer, Robert Hill Schwartz, could do to rebut the case against his client except to say, “The police and the FBI zeroed in on Irwin Margolies and paid any price to get him.” It was not Margolies who was behind these “murders most foul,” he declared. “The architect of all the murders … the foulest of a foul band of witnesses” was Henry Oestericher.

  But the evidence, Waples countered, showed otherwise. If the witnesses against Margolies had been a foul band, nevertheless, he said, “sometimes you have to make a pact with the devil, so to speak, so you can get the mastermind.”

  It did not take the jury long. The six men and six women deliberated only a few hours and then marched back into the courtroom. Their only question, really, had been about the conspiracy to murder David Blejwas. Yes, there had been those tape recordings on which that plot had been discussed. Yes, there had been the testimony of Adair and Calise. But who could really believe such men? Who could find the guilt of anyone on their word? Of that charge, Margolies was acquitted.

  But not so the others. The evidence had been overwhelming, conclusive. There were no doubts, reasonable or otherwise. Irwin Margolies was guilty of murder in the second degree in the murder of Margaret Barbera. Irwin Margolies was guilty of murder in the second degree in the murder of Jenny Soo Chin. Irwin Margolies was guilty of conspiracy to murder Margaret Barbera and Jenny Soo Chin.

  On June 24, Margolies heard his future. Justice Eve Preminger, her scorn barely concealed, told him that he would spend fifty years of his life, if he had that many years, in New York State prison. She gave him twenty-five years to life on each count of murder, the terms to be served consecutively. And he would not begin serving them until he had finished the twenty-eight years he owed the U.S. government.

  It was over. Irwin Margolies had reached for the gold ring on the merry-go-round of life and found it was only worthless brass. He had destroyed the lives of a dozen and more people, and had, in truth, taken the lives of five. He would have all the years of his future to consider what it was he had done and to contemplate the worth of his doing.

  Long ago, the poet-philosopher Lao Tzu wrote:

  There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.

  There is no greater guilt than discontentment.

  And there is no greater disaster than greed.

  Image Gallery

  Body of Leo Kuranuki. (N.Y.P.D.)

  Body of Robert Schulz. (N.Y.P.D.)

  Body of Edward Benford. (N.Y.P.D.)

  Glasses, shoes, headband, and an unidentified towel are the only clues to the abduction of Margaret Barbera. (N.Y.P.D.)

  Looking east from the rooftop garage toward the lights of Manhattan’s skyscrapers. The body of Edward Benford can be seen to the left. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The cars of the murdered CBS employees are still parked side by side the morning after the killings. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The body of Margaret Barbera was discovered at 6 a.m. that morning. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The kitchen of Margaret Barbera proved to be as messy as her life. Note the Federal Tax Handbook lower right. (N.Y.P.D.)

  (N.Y.P.D.)

  Aerial view of Keansburg, New Jersey, with Donald Nash’s home indicated by an arrow. Police feared the swamp area might contain another body. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The living room at the Nash home. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The garage attached to the Nash home in which Nash’s van was repainted. (N.Y.P.D.)

  Police frogmen search the tidal creek behind the Nash home. Five .22 cartridges were discovered. (N.Y.P.D.)

  (N.Y.P.D.)

  The bedroom in Margaret Barbera’s apartment. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The living room in Margaret Barbera’s apartment. (N.Y.P.D.)

  (N.Y.P.D.)

  A police design specialist at work drafting the scene of the murder of the three CBS employees. (N.Y.P.D.)

  The interior of Nash’s van with newly purchased camping equipment. (N.Y.P.D.)

  Madeleine and Irwin Margolies leaving Federal District Court.

  Acknowledgments

  This book could not have been written without the cooperation a
nd assistance of members of the New York City Police Department who were directly involved in the investigation of what became known as the CBS murders, nor without access to certain files, documents, memoranda, and records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation relating to its probe of the swindle that led to those murders.

  Most particularly, I would like to express my gratitude for their patience and help to the members of the task force charged with uncovering the crime, Detectives Richard Chartrand and Robert Patterson of the Midtown North precinct and to Lieutenant Richard Gallagher and Detective John Wales, both now retired from the force.

  —R.H.

  About the Author

  Richard Hammer is the author of more than twenty fiction and nonfiction books, as well as numerous short stories, articles, and essays for major publications worldwide. He has won two Edgar Awards for Best Fact Crime, for The Vatican Connection (1982) and The CBS Murders (1987), and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley (1971). Both the New York Times and the Washington Post named One Morning in the War (1970) and The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley one of the ten best books of the respective years in which they were published. Hammer’s first book, Between Life and Death (1969), explored the case that led to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland and its repercussions. He wrote and narrated the Academy Award–winning documentary Interviews with My-Lai Veterans (1970), and has been involved in many TV films and motion pictures. Before becoming a full-time freelance writer, he wrote for the New York Times and its Week in Review section, where he covered the war in Vietnam, the civil rights struggle, and most other major stories of the times. A native of Hartford, Connecticut, Hammer attended Mount Hermon School, earned degrees from Syracuse University and Trinity College, and did postgraduate work at Columbia University. He and his wife currently reside in New York City.