“Larry! Not my grandmother’s Amish star quilt!”
• •
tigation; Delgrosso received a five-day
suspension. When Delgrosso testified
at Smokes and Warren’s trial, the jurors
were not informed of this incident.
Sussman asked Delgrosso about an
anonymous call that the N.Y.P.D. had
received on January 3, 1987. The caller
said that “he wanted to offer the name
of the person who killed the elderly
Frenchman on New Year’s Eve,” accord-
ing to a report typed up by a detective.
When asked how he knew who had
committed this crime, the caller said
that he had been “the lookout” for the
robbery, and had not known that the
other man “was going to kill anybody.”
The caller gave an address in the Bronx,
and he said the perpetrator could be
found there, “using crack.” According
to the police report, the caller “stated
the wallet was at the apartment.”
Delgrosso never followed up on this
tip. “We felt that it was not credible,”
he testified, explaining that the caller
had “stated that it was just him and the
perpetrator on the block when the old
man was killed.” (The caller had actu-
ally said, “There were a few people walk-
ing in the street.” Others had said that
the street was more crowded.) Delgrosso
also said the police doubted the caller’s
credibility because he had referred to
the victim’s wallet. “Mr. Casse’s wallet
was not taken,” Delgrosso said. “It was
a billfold with money.” (Casse’s widow
had said it was a “small wallet billfold.”)
On the witness stand, Delgrosso de-
nied any wrongdoing in his handling of
the case. Then Keenan asked him about
Anthony’s claim that the police had pres-
sured him to coöperate by suggesting
that he might become a suspect: “Did
you ever tell Mr. Anthony that you were
going to show his picture around, and
that, if he was identified as a participant
in a crime, that he could be arrested?”
Delgrosso admitted that this was
true. “I told him we were going to use
his photograph to investigate not only
this case but other cases that happened
on New Year’s Eve,” he said. And that,
“if his photograph was picked out, he
may be charged with something.”
B
y the spring of 2019, two of the four
witnesses who had placed Smokes
and Warren at the crime scene, Robert
Anthony and Kevin Burns, had recanted.
The other two were Anthony’s cousins,
Andre and Alfonso Houston. Keenan
flew to California to meet with Andre,
and Henning spoke to him by phone.
They both declined to call him as a wit-
ness. According to Henning, Andre
made it clear that he did not want to
be involved in the case. The Houstons’
absence from the courtroom weighed
on Smokes, who told me that he won-
dered why they “won’t display the full
transparency to tell the truth and cor-
rect the lie.” (Efforts to reach them for
this story were unsuccessful.)
In June, Henning and Sussman sub-
mitted their final memo to Judge An-
tignani, arguing that they had met their
burden of proof and that he should
throw out the men’s convictions. Keenan,
in her response memo, described An-
thony’s and Burns’s testimonies as “in-
herently unbelievable.” The defense had
claimed that witnesses “gave the police
manufactured testimony because they
were told they were potential suspects,
that their pictures would be shown
around, and that they could be arrested
if they were identified,” she wrote.
“These tactics are not coercive. Instead,
the detectives were explaining to un-
cooperative witnesses what might hap-
pen.” The memo also accused Smokes
of “playing for a payday,” and noted that
he had been in contact with a few wit-
nesses before the hearing. Keenan wrote
that he was trying “to ensure that the
witnesses were saying what Smokes
wanted them to say.” (Smokes had tes-
tified that he had contacted them to
ask if he could pass on their phone num-
bers to his attorneys.)
The hearing was nearing its end, but
none of the lawyers seemed to realize
that many of Goldstein’s files had gone
unexamined. In early October, I visited
the New York City Municipal Archives,
and found a faded crimson folder with
“Homicide Bureau” written on the front.
Inside were manila file folders, each la-
belled by hand: “Detective George Del
Grosso,” “James Walker,” “Robert An-
thony,” “Evidence.”
An expense report in one folder
caught my eye. In Keenan’s memo to
the judge, she had seized on one of
Burns’s claims at the hearing. Before
the murder trial, he said, a man he called
“the guy with the badge” had told him
that, “if I testify against Smokes, he can
make my life better.” Burns said that
after he testified the man gave him ten
packs of Marlboros. Keenan insisted
that this had never happened. Burns’s
“claims sound so much like a cheap novel
because that is what they are—bad
THENEWYORKER,MARCH2, 2020 23
