The Fence - Dick Lehr [147]
“Now, do you want it?”
Minutes later, when Roach resumed questioning Craig Jones, he never asked what Dave Williams had told him during a private moment at the station. Mike’s lawyers had, in effect, blinked, hoping the rest of their case was enough for the jury to get Burgio.
The jury never heard one of most powerful pieces of evidence.
Jurors were developing a bad feeling about Boston cops, however.
Burgio’s longtime partner, Leonard Lilly, for one, left them scratching their heads in wonder when he testified he had no recall of anything Burgio said after the beating. Lilly had driven to Woodruff Way to pick up his pal for a ride back to the station.
“Why did Burgio need a ride?” Sinsheimer asked.
“I don’t recall, sir,” Lilly said.
“Didn’t come up at all?” Sinsheimer asked.
“I didn’t say that. I said I don’t recall.”
“Well,” Sinsheimer remarked. His voice turned sarcastic, wanting to draw the jury’s attention to the witness’s implausible memory failure. “Tell us everything you recall about your conversation with Burgio.”
“I don’t recall any conversation.”
Following Lilly, Sergeant Detective Dan Dovidio surprised jurors with his story of driving to the dead end after the beating and seeing only Williams and Burgio.
“Who, if anyone else, was there?” Sinsheimer asked.
“No one,” the patrol supervisor said, even though the jury had already learned that after the beating the dead end was filled with cruisers and cops. Dovidio explained the reason he was summoned was that the cruiser operated by one of his charges, Dave Williams, had been damaged, and he was required to inspect it.
“Take your time,” instructed Sinsheimer, “and tell the ladies and gentlemen what you did to inspect the vehicle because of the damage.”
“I looked at the damage that I could visibly see, and what Officer Williams described to me as to how it happened.”
“What did Officer Williams describe for you?”
“I think he said he hit a patch of ice and he skidded,” Dovidio said. “Hit the steel post that was in front of the vehicle, and that he had collided with the Lexus.”
“He didn’t say, Gee, Sarge, you ought to take a look at all the blood on the back of my cruiser?”
“No. No.”
“That didn’t come up at all?”
The wiry and gray-haired veteran eyed Sinsheimer from behind tinted glasses.
“Nope,” he said.
“How about the fact that Michael Cox was injured behind that cruiser, bleeding on the trunk, bleeding from his face, bleeding on the ground; did that come up?”
“No, it did not.”
Juror Sharon Schwartz was angered, thinking, “He’s so full of shit.” In their minds jurors could juxtapose the sergeant’s words with a photograph—blown up to poster size—showing swirls of Mike’s blood on the trunk. It resembled a painting done by a child. The suburban homemaker was further disgusted to learn about the commendation Dovidio wrote a few days later for Williams and Burgio, an honor that was still part of their personnel records.
“You’re a cop and you don’t see the blood?” juror Bob McDonough was asking himself. How could Dovidio have not seen that? “He was lying through his teeth.”
Later, when the jury was shown a photograph of Jimmy Burgio, McDonough was reminded Jimmy Burgio was the one defendant who’d been a no-show. “I’d thought it was strange he didn’t come,” McDonough said. “It seemed arrogant.” McDonough studied the photograph, and his impression of the beefy cop with his goatee only hardened. “I was thinking he looked like a guy you wouldn’t like. He looked like a Mafioso.”
McDonough commuted by train each day to the trial. Walking from South Station to the courthouse, he found himself