The Art of the Heist

Twenty-Five

Because Marty Leppo represented Tommy Sperrazza and others who were going to testify as witnesses against me, he could no longer act as my attorney. Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult for me to find someone else to represent me. Because of my notoriety in the Boston area, there was a media frenzy surrounding the upcoming trials. The only thing lawyers like more than money is free publicity. As a result, nearly every criminal attorney in the city was vying for the job.

My new attorney was a man named Earle Cooley. Cooley, who at the time worked for the highly respected Boston law firm of Hale and Dorr, was a brilliant criminal lawyer. His gravelly voice, no-bullshit attitude, and fringe of red hair endeared him to me immediately.

From the beginning Cooley was optimistic about my prospects for acquittals in all three trials. He had good reason to be confident. None of the witnesses against me was exactly a stand-up citizen. In order to convict me, a jury would have to believe the testimony of Tommy Sperrazza, a confessed multiple murderer, and Doreen Weeks, a thief. Still, I knew enough to prepare myself for the worst.

Not long after the indictments were handed down the trial dates for all three cases were announced. The Norfolk County Trust case was to be the first one tried, beginning in May 1980. I was relieved by this decision, as it was the one case I was most concerned about losing. At least I knew it would be over and done with quickly.

But as Cooley and I set about preparing my defense, we were confronted by an unexpected hurdle. At five-thirty in the morning on March 6 I was rousted from my cell at Walpole and whisked onto a waiting Con Air flight. I wasn’t even given an opportunity to call my lawyer.

The federal agents accompanying me told me that I had been identified as the head of an inmate execution squad and that, as a result, I was being transferred to the federal prison at Marion, Illinois. This was one of the most ridiculous statements I’d ever heard. Moving prisoners around to keep them from interacting with their lawyers is a common dirty trick employed by prosecutors. I figured this was the real reason behind my transfer to Marion. But I soon realized that splitting me up from my attorney was only one of the motivating factors behind the move.

Days after my arrival at Marion, the prison library received several copies of the Boston Globe containing articles that claimed not only that I was involved with the execution squad but also that I had been working as an informant. The source of this information, the Globe claimed, was someone in the Boston FBI office. My old friends John Connolly and John Clougherty, no doubt.

My execution could not have been more certain had I been sentenced to death row. At the time the Marion facility had a reputation for being the one of the most violent prisons in the country. Informers were not tolerated. Fortunately, my fellow prisoners were not as gullible as the people who’d arranged for my transfer had taken them to be.

That night, the inmates held a prisonwide meeting in the cafeteria. I was relieved to learn that the prevailing sentiment was almost entirely in my favor.

“Do they think we’re stupid?” the head of the inmate council said after opening the meeting.

An old-timer spoke up, echoing the first man’s assessment of the situation. “It’s the first time in twenty years I’ve seen the Boston Globe in the library.”

Within minutes, the matter was settled, and everyone concurred that I was not the informer I’d been painted as.

While I was sweating it out in Marion, Earle Cooley was fighting to have me brought back to Massachusetts. Days after my transfer a federal judge ordered my immediate return, but the government continued to drag its feet. Finally, disgusted by the delay, the judge threatened to drop all charges against me if I wasn’t brought back. After several days of wrangling, and with the very real possibility of a dismissal hanging over their heads, the feds reluctantly agreed to have me transferred to the state prison in Concord, New Hampshire.

It was far from a total victory for me, but at least I would be back in New England.

On May 19, 1980, the Norfolk County Trust case finally went to trial.

There have been few experiences in my life more devastating than walking into that courtroom and seeing Martha Ferrante at the defense table. There was no getting around the uncomfortable fact that she was there because of her relationship with me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, leaning over to speak to her as I took my seat.

Martha shook her head. “It’s not your fault,” she said.

There’s not much you can do in a situation like that except remain true to yourself and those you love. To her credit, Martha’s allegiances never once wavered. She had good reason to be scared: a guilty verdict would have meant upward of ten years in federal prison for her. But if she was afraid, she never once let it show. She remained utterly calm and composed throughout the trial, even when Weeks herself was on the stand, repeating the outrageous lies she’d told FBI agents about Martha’s participation in the heist.

In his opening statement Earle Cooley told jurors that the government’s case was based on “a collection of murderers and other felons who have come in to lie to benefit themselves.” In addition to Doreen Weeks, the felons Cooley referred to were Tommy Sperrazza, Bobby Fitzgerald, and Jimmy Stokes.

Sperrazza was the first of the bunch to testify. Still holding fast to his claim that he had refused to participate in the robbery, Sperrazza told jurors he had overheard me planning the crime on several different occasions. He also testified to Barbara Drew’s involvement in the crime.

But Sperrazza wasn’t exactly a stellar witness for the prosecution. By that time he was serving three life sentences, for the murders of Spinney, Webster, and Cirvinale. He had also confessed to shooting Donald Brown and to the prison murder of Johnny Stokes. Cooley was quick to point out Sperrazza’s long criminal history to the jury, along with the benefits Sperrazza stood to reap in exchange for his testimony.

Fitzgerald appeared after Sperrazza, once again repeating his claim that I had given him the bank bags to hold. As with Sperrazza, Cooley immediately attacked the man’s credibility.

Jimmy Stokes, who testified after Fitzgerald and who was still hoping to cut some kind of deal for himself, told the most bizarre story of all. Incredibly, he claimed that shortly after the robbery Joe Santo and I had driven up to Concord Reformatory, where Stokes was an inmate at the time, and thrown $1,700 in cash over the prison wall to him.

The story was ridiculous in every way. Why anyone in their right mind would throw that much money into a prison was inconceivable. Stokes’s claim that it was to buy drugs and jewelry clearly did not go over well with jurors. From my seat at the defense table I could see the skepticism on their faces as they listened to Stokes’s testimony. That he was a convicted murderer only added to their doubt.

The last of the four to testify was Doreen Weeks. She was also the only witness to link Martha Ferrante to the crime. Once again, she repeated her story of having seen Martha with me on the morning of the heist. Her tale, which as usual included the account of Martha throwing the stolen money around, was almost as unbelievable as Stokes’s had been.

Martha herself took the stand to refute Weeks’s testimony, saying she had been at her parents’ house in Northampton with her then-boyfriend on the morning of the robbery. Her boyfriend confirmed the story, telling jurors Martha had been with him at the time the crime was committed.

By the time the trial was over, the case seemed like a slam dunk in our favor. Even so, I couldn’t allow myself to hope for an acquittal until the jury finally returned their verdict. They did so on June 22, finding all three of us innocent of the charges against us. As pleased as I was to have been acquitted of the robbery, my real relief was in knowing that Martha would not be doing time for a crime I had committed.

Though Earle Cooley deserved much of the credit for winning the case, there was one other person without whom an acquittal almost certainly would not have been possible for any of us: Barbara Drew. In interview after grueling interview with federal investigators, the teller never once admitted to having been involved in the robbery. I had known from the beginning that Drew had ice in her veins. But even I could not have imagined just how cool she really was. So consistent was her story, so fervent her denials of having been a part of the holdup, that the federal prosecutor never even considered charging her as an accessory. She played no small role in discrediting both Tommy Sperrazza and Doreen Weeks.

But of all the parties involved, I think it’s safe to say that the federal prosecutor bears the most responsibility for the acquittal. Had he not overreached by bringing charges against Martha, he might very well have won his case. After all, Santo and I were both guilty.

With the not-guilty decision in the bank robbery case, I naively thought the worst of my troubles were behind me.

Immediately after the verdict was announced, a Boston Globe reporter approached me in the courtroom.

“This was the only one we were worried about,” I told him confidently, after kissing Martha and my mother.