Martray said finally that he’d decided to cooperate with the police because he had children of his own.
“People say that I was a bad cop,” Martray said. “I wasn’t that bad.”
Bill Costopoulos implied that Martray had told the cops that Jay Smith used a “Spanish accent” because he’d read a magazine account of the call to police on the night the body was discovered, wherein the reporter had erroneously claimed that the caller had a Spanish accent.
Bill Costopoulos was all over the courtroom in flourishes, and at one point was right up in Martray’s face when Guida jumped up and demanded that he be ordered to back away from the witness.
Judge Lipsitt said, “It’s his style,” but ordered Costopoulos to ease off.
Apparently, the judge liked Costopoulos personally, and didn’t like Rick Guida.
After that testimony was over, Bill Costopoulos said that it was his best day.
Charles Montione was another story. He came in like an extra from Miami Vice, pinkie ring and all. Montione wore a trim goatee similar to the defense lawyer’s. He had street-corner good looks and sported a hairdo like the Wolf Man’s. He seemed as though he wouldn’t be credible.
Montione testified in a soft cellblock voice. He told of Jay Smith escape plans which added to the consciousness of guilt, but then he told the jury about Jay Smith’s “smirking” when Montione asked if he’d killed the Reinerts.
He described the remarkable business of Jay Smith wanting a magazine with a model who was posed in a very particular way.
Montione’s attitude as a witness was “I don’t want to be here, but I am, and you can believe me or not.”
Most people in that courtroom obviously did. The defense was worried about Montione’s apparent credibility.
Jack Holtz testified about a nine-page letter he’d seized when he arrested Jay Smith in 1985. It was a letter to attorney Glenn Zeitz, care of private investigator Russell Kolins. It was dated January 14, 1981.
The letter from Jay Smith outlined his whereabouts on the weekend of June 22, 1979. He informed his attorney that Grace Gilmore, the new owner of the house, had agreed to let him stay until July 1st, and that he was either visiting or telephoning his wife, and visiting or telephoning his lawyer over much of the murder weekend.
As to the night of Susan Reinerts disappearance, Jay Smith wrote, “On Friday, June 22, sometime in the late afternoon Grace Gilmore came. I heard movement upstairs and went to see what was up. I thought it was my daughter Stephanie returning for some clothes. Grace said she cancelled the trip to shore with sister.”
It was extraordinary how casually he tossed in the name of his daughter for his new lawyer, since at the time Stephanie and Edward Hunsberger had not been seen for three years.
He then described his daughter Sheri coming into the house and said he was uncertain if she’d seen Grace Gilmore. It was Sheri’s twenty-second birthday, he wrote, and they went out to supper. They returned and moved some of her things to her new apartment at about 7:00 P.M.
Jay Smith claimed in that letter that Grace Gilmore had returned on Saturday and they had coffee and a talk about what furniture he would leave. He maintained that she went down to the lower level of the house to look at the heater. Then she went back to work upstairs and he remained below in the basement apartment. Jay Smith wrote that Grace Gilmore had left in the afternoon but his daughter returned and stayed until after dark. He wrote that his brother came during the late morning on Sunday to determine what furniture was to be taken.
A letter to his brother that was also seized by Jack Holtz pursuant to his search warrant was simply an attempt to coach the brother on testimony regarding that weekend if he ever had to take the stand.
He told his brother that Grace Gilmore had come on Friday and Saturday, but did not mention her presence on Sunday. As to Sunday he wrote, “You came in the late morning or early afternoon. You had granddaughter with you. Sher came late in afternoon and left 8:30 or 9:30 P.M.”
As to events after that weekend that he hoped his brother could corroborate, Jay Smith wrote:
1) You moved my stuff.
2) Stuff had been kept intact since you got it.
3) I told you to get rid of clothes.
4) Car remains the same except for normal cleanup and maintenance. Many have driven it.
Prior to the first day of testimony, Jack Holtz had admitted to being scared of Bill Costopoulos who had a reputation for being able to rattle police witnesses and make them look foolish. But Jack Holtz wasn’t the same fellow he’d been back in 1979 when he was second banana to Joe VanNort-when he was only thirty-two years old and his hair was black.
He still had those glasses screwed to his face, but he evinced a lot of confidence when he took the stand to describe the seizing of the letters in Jay Smith’s cell.
He answered all of the questions on cross-examination in an articulate and careful fashion. He’d answer “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” whenever possible, and remained unruffled when the defense lawyer stalked to the witness box to discuss the seizure of a man’s personal correspondence.
Bill Costopoulos was very effective in his use of righteous indignation. He had good timing and didn’t pull it from the bag of tricks all that often. In fact he had a gift for creating smokescreens even when he had little substance to work with.
But this time he asked one question too many. It was a mistake and he knew it immediately.
As though the letter was irrelevant, he asked Jack Holtz, “Is there anything in this nine-page letter that would be significant to your investigation?”
Holtz was too serious about his job ever to grin openly on the witness stand, but he came close. He said, “It was all significant.” Then he launched into all the things about the letter that differed from his findings.
He testified that Grace Gilmore had been at the shore from Friday until Sunday, and that Jay Smith’s daughter had not been at the house, and that everyone except comatose patients had been interviewed and Jay Smith was not seen visiting his dying wife at the hospital, and he had not visited his attorney, and that his brother had not been at his house, and in fact nobody had seen Jay Smith’s face from Friday afternoon until Grace Gilmore heard his car drive away on Sunday afternoon.
The inescapable conclusion was that the letter showed a tremendous consciousness of guilt.
Bill Costopoulos came back to the counsel table and could be heard by the reporters saying, “Aw, shit!”
It was his worst day. He was more careful with Jack Holtz after that.
Guida kept the witnesses streaming in. Grace Gilmore took the stand and directly refuted the Jay Smith letter by saying she had gone to the shore and hadn’t returned until Sunday afternoon.
Agent Hess of the FBI testified to interviewing Jay Smith shortly after the crime occurred when Jay Smith told it differently, saying he had not gone to dinner with Sheri on Friday, June 22nd.
A representative of Bell Telephone testified that Jay Smith had placed five calls to his attorney over that weekend, but there was a gap between 3:43 P.M. Friday and 8:37 P.M. Sunday, which was ninety-seven minutes after the men from Three Mile Island saw Susan Reinerts car in the parking lot.
And Holtz told the jury that the driving time from the Host Inn to the house on Valley Forge Road was ninety minutes.
Bill Costopoulos had an impressive group of lawyers in his law firm. They all resembled him in that they brought a little passion to their work, but as Josh Lock learned, it’s okay as long as you don’t get too emotionally involved with criminal defendants.