The Fence - Dick Lehr [85]
Daley said nothing. Hussey followed with another question: “Did you ever tell Officer Cox to put his hands behind his back, who you thought was a suspect at the time. Then you told him, ‘Put your hands on the car.’”
Daley still said nothing. Hussey kept going; he had the floor now. “Michael Cox might have been unconscious that night but his recollection is a lot better today.”
Daley did not say a word.
“Officer Daley, I’ll ask you, please, don’t make yourself more trouble than you have already. Okay. Be truthful with us. Don’t be untruthful. It will ruin your reputation the rest of your career.”
Daley spoke, not to answer a question, but to ask one. “Can I talk to my lawyer?”
Sergeant Detective Cruz shut off the tape recorder. Following a short break, Cruz fiddled with the machine. “Okay, it’s 10:35 A.M. I’m turning the tape back on.” The tape recorder ran for one minute more—just long enough for Daley to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. “I no longer want to speak to anyone.”
The interview was over. Daley had made his choice. His words were the last he would ever say to Boston police investigators regarding the beating of Michael Cox.
Between February and March, investigators for Internal Affairs interviewed fifteen Boston police officers. Mostly they were stiff-armed—as when Daley “lawyered up” and shut down his interview. Jimmy Burgio’s interview never got started; he showed up just long enough to assert his privilege against self-incrimination. Dave Williams, saying he had “nothing to hide,” actually met twice with investigators. He then began with the canard that he and Burgio barreled into the cul-de-sac in separate cruisers. He even penciled in a phony location for Burgio’s car right behind his own cruiser on a diagram. Hussey and Cruz already suspected the story about two cruisers was bogus. Hussey warned Williams about telling the truth. “I’ll ask you again. Officer Burgio—was he in the car with you?” Williams admitted he was—he and Burgio did ride together.
Williams was caught in the lie. Hussey pounced. “See, David, what this is, it complicates matters if you are not being up front, truthful with us.”
“I’ve been truthful with you the whole time,” Williams insisted.
Hussey wasn’t impressed. “I have a problem here,” he said. “We have an officer that was severely beaten and we are pretty convinced that an officer did it. Probably mistakenly. Okay. But I have two major problems. First, the amount of beating the suspect took, who turned out to be a police officer. And secondly, when the people found out he was a police officer they walked away and left him bleeding on the ground.”
Hussey was looking to leverage Williams’s admission into something bigger. But Williams did not budge. He stuck to the story of complete innocence he outlined in his written report—that he’d jumped from his cruiser and caught one of the suspects after a foot chase in the front of the gold Lexus. Williams was talking about a suspect who, in fact, did not need to be chased, who was already down and accounted for soon after Williams’s cruiser hit him. It didn’t matter. Williams said he didn’t see a beating.
Not every interview was as unproductive as Williams’s. Investigators did pick up bits and pieces. In addition to Ian Daley’s comments about what plainclothes officers should wear, for example, Donald Caisey added that while writing police reports Daley told him he was sure cops had beaten Mike. Investigators learned about the similar statement Dave Williams blurted out in Mike’s bay in the hospital emergency room—that he thought cops had beaten Mike. Craig Jones added the information about his encounter with Dave Williams in the upstairs hallway of the Roxbury police station. Craig said, “His exact words to me, he thinks his partner may have hit Mike by accident.”
Richie Walker had a tantalizing tidbit. The dreadlocked cop disclosed he saw a Boston police officer following Mike Cox as Mike ran toward the fence after a suspect. He said the officer had to be