Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 29, No. 4, September 1971

Sullivan then attacked True on the fact of his pandering his testimony for immunity. “You received immunity for payment for your testimony, did you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you hadn’t received immunity, would you still have been willing to cleanse that dark heart of yours and testify as to the events of the night of March 9?” There was deep scorn in Sullivan’s voice.

There was an immediate objection by Assistant D.A. Alexander which Judge Fricke overruled.

“You haven’t answered my question!” Sullivan persisted.

True fidgeted in his seat and wet his lips with his tongue. He found Jack Santo staring at him with cold eyes and turned his head. There was a weighty silence in the courtroom and only the ticking of the clock on the wall could be heard as the silence continued.

Sullivan took several steps toward the witness stand, stared at True for several seconds.

“No more questions,” he spat out and turned away. He glanced at the jury and shook his head in an expressive gesture of disgust.

William Upshaw followed John True to the witness stand. He had backed out of the robbery because, for one reason, he feared to get involved with Santo and Perkins. He repeated the same story he told police in April and May when he was questioned after the kidnaping of Baxter Shorter. Sullivan and Jack Hardy, the two defense attorneys, made short work of Upshaw. They riddled him full of holes and exposed him as a cheap hoodlum who would sell his own mother for the price of a meal and a drink.

The most dramatic, and sensational, testimony came next when Samuel Sirianni was called to the stand. As he walked past the counsel table Barbara’s icy aplomb failed and her face turned white. She knew instantly that she had been tricked by Donna Prow. Whatever hope she had entertained to win an acquittal up to that moment deserted her.

Sirianni related his meeting with Barbara in the county jail and the conversation he had with her which, he stated, was recorded. As Sirianni testified, Santo and Perkins glared at Barbara with evil hatred. Santo whispered across the counsel table to her.

“You damned stupid bitch!”

Barbara turned her head to hide the sudden tears that flooded her eyes. She realized at that moment that all her life she had permitted herself to be used, that it was her gullibility, a weakness often born of desperation to save herself from the pits of her own making, that drew her into deeper hells.

Attorney Jack Hardy was dismayed. He made a valiant attempt to recover some ground for Barbara and fought gallantly for her. He was sick at heart at the sudden turn of events. He rose to address the Court.

“Your Honor, I have instructed my client from the outset to level with me at all times, to always tell me the truth and not to conceal anything from me. I feel at this moment that I have been thrust into an untenable situation as concerns my defense of my client. I respectfully ask the Court, because of what has occurred, to allow me to withdraw from this case as attorney for defendant Barbara Graham.”

“Denied,” Judge Fricke said cryptically. “You will continue with your defense, to the very best of your talents and ability as is due the defendant. Court is recessed for one hour.”

Hardy’s motion to withdraw from the case injured Barbara more than if Hardy assumed the position of a witness and testified that Barbara had admitted the murder to him. The several newspapermen in the courtroom glared at him as he walked by. They had noted the jury’s reaction and felt that Hardy’s speech was the grossest kind of misconduct for an attorney defending a client in a capital crime.

Hardy took over the defense ably after court resumed but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. Barbara knew it. Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins knew it.

Barbara’s alibi witnesses were gored. Her estranged husband, Henry, was dissolved into dirty little crumbs under the scathing cross-examination by Adolph Alexander.

He testified that he had a violent argument with Barbara on the night of March 9, but it was proved by unemployment records that he had actually left home on March 7, and that he did not see Barbara again for several weeks after. The defense was falling apart, bit by bit.

A fourteen-year-old neighbor, Connie Perez, testified that she had heard Barbara and her husband quarreling violently on the night of March 9. Alexander proved she was mistaken and impeached her testimony by producing records of the General Hospital, signed by two different ambulance drivers, that Connie had been picked up at 7:00 A.M. for treatment of her polio condition and that she had been returned to her home after 9:00 P.M.

Barbara then took the stand in her own defense. She testified that she had tried to establish the false alibi because she could not “remember where I actually was the night of the murder. I do know that I was not in Burbank, and certainly at no time have I ever been at or seen the home of Mrs. Monohan.”