Katie Beers (21 page)

My husband Derek, and my children Logan and Halee.

Carolyn Gusoff and I meet for the first time in Allentown, PA at a Panera Bread in late 2008. I always wanted to share my story but waited for recovery and adulthood. (Photo by Derek)

With reading glasses propped on the end of his nose, Judge Joel Lefkowitz read a note aloud.

“We, the jury, have reached a verdict,” he said, and then shot a glance at the bailiff.

“Okay, bring them in.”

As the jury filed in, Sal, seated at the defense table, took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. The camera in the corner of the courtroom picked up the sweaty sheen on his multi-folded forehead above shaded aviator glasses. He wore a wide paisley tie and his shirt collar was unbuttoned at the top to accommodate his extra chins.

Sal, now forty-one years old, was facing two counts of sexual abuse in the first degree and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. They were enough to put Sal away for at least a dozen years. Prosecutors offered him a generous plea deal of only two-and-a-third to seven years in prison, if he admitted to the top count. The deal was intended to spare Katie the trauma of having to take the witness stand and relive the years of abuse. It was to be a package deal: Esposito and Inghilleri. If they both agreed to plead guilty, Katie would never have to testify. But Sal insisted on his day in court. Against the advice of counsel, he demanded a trial. He stuck to his story: he was innocent of molesting Katie and she was a liar.

Sal got his trial, and along with it, a slew of new allegations: He assaulted Katie’s grandmother and brother, he defrauded Helen Beers, he sexually abused three other children, he cheated on his taxes, he bashed Katie’s cat’s head against a wall and made her watch.

“I did not kill no cat,” he said, sauntering past reporters in the hallway of Criminal Court in Riverhead.

Katie would have something to say about that. On June 28, 1994, Katie Beers, ushered into court through a back entrance and stairways, propped herself upon a pillow on the witness stand of Judge Lefkowitz’s courtroom. Three telephone books supported her feet. She wore a lace-collared pink dress and her hair was now shoulder length and wavy. She
held tightly the hand of Mary Bromley, her therapist.

“I was scared of Sal…because he was always beating up on people and animals.”
²⁷

For four hours Katie calmly answered questions. She described how Sal made her “touch him on his private. He put his hand over mine. He moved my hand up and down.” In court, Sal quickly moved his hands away from his chin and clasped them in his lap beneath the defense table.

“I don’t remember dates,” she confidently told the prosecutor, “but I remember it was often on a Sunday.”

Now eleven years old, Katie was unshaken, but for a small grievance she expressed to the judge during a break.

“Can you make him stop looking at me that way?” Sal was always sitting back in his chair, glaring. When her testimony was over, Katie bounced out of the witness stand and waved goodbye to the judge and jury. The court officers shuttled her to the back of the courtroom, the route usually reserved for legal staff, and out the courthouse back door. Members of the news media never got the picture of Katie for which they had been staked out. For most of us, her brief courtroom appearance was the first and last time we would ever lay eyes on the girl in the headlines.

The
New York Post
cover the next day shouted in all caps: COURAGE OF KATIE.

Outside the courtroom, Sal crowed, “Everything she said in there is all fabricated. Believe me—I’m not going to lose no sleep over this.”

His attorney, Thomas Klei, later implored the jury to be “brave” and not judge Sal by his unlikable looks. Sal, he told reporters, was originally tricked into signing a confession by police who he claimed withheld his nitroglycerin pills. Then, the defense floated, Sal became the victim of an unyielding press, thrown into the spotlight only because Katie was kidnapped.

Go, go, go!

Reporters spilled out of the courtroom, raced down the hallway to alert their cameramen court was in recess. I flipped on the microphone and my mini-cassette player.

“The jury has to see that my client is human. That he is not the monster he’s been made out to be in the papers,” Klei said as he and Sal walked the long corridor toward the elevators. It was a daily dance.
Sal would pace as quickly as his two hundred and seventy pound frame would allow, muttering, “No comment.” A horde of cameras and reporters like me, in nineties shoulder-padded blazers and too-big button earrings, would scamper in high heels alongside of him, arms outstretched with microphones and recorders. I was now working as the Long Island reporter for WNBC in New York City. The promotion gave me a certain sense of ownership over the beat. Whatever happened on Long Island was on my watch, and in July of 1994, the Katie Beers case was squarely back on the front pages..

Sal would say nothing until he could go no further, boxed in by the closed elevator doors and the sea of cameras. As he would stand, waiting for the interminably slow courthouse elevators, a torrent of questions would wash over him, like a beached whale rolling in with the tide.

You think you’ve been vilified, unfairly painted?

Sal how you holding up?

Sal, do you think the jury believed you?

Sal, you got anything to say?

“Can’t read their minds, just hope it’s a good outcome.”

You think you can convince the jurors that you never had Katie touch you?

The elevator came. We followed him in. Sal patted his breast pocket.

“Got my cigarettes. I’m gonna need ?em.”

Sal had made the risky move of taking the stand in his own defense. DA Catterson was prosecuting the case himself and let Sal wriggle on the stand through question after question designed to expose Sal as slime. Catterson emerged from the courtroom with a grin.

You got pretty emotional in there
?

“Don’t we all get emotional about little ones? What is a little girl supposed to do? She was betrayed. We have an obligation as a society to protect kids; we have an obligation to kids to protect them.” Catterson didn’t need prodding. One question wound him up.

“Maybe the tough life she had helped her get through this. She’s doing as well as can be expected. She’s gonna have a lot of problems. The grandmother couldn’t help her, her mother wouldn’t help her and Linda
didn’t help her. She had no one to protect her. She was nobody’s child, but she is really everybody’s child, and we have an obligation to protect her.”

Sal was in way over his head. He would arrive each day to court trying to look the part of an upstanding citizen: a suit and too-short tie, an unbuttoned dress shirt, the aviator glasses. He carried an attaché case and tugged on a cigarette as he lugged his heavy frame past cameras and reporters outside Suffolk Criminal Court.

What do you have to do today?

“I’m gonna go on the stand.”

Are you nervous?

“Not at all.”

He paused for another cigarette, heaving as he leaned on a garbage pail, nervously chewing gum. I walked up to him, camera rolling.

Just want to know how you feel, Sal, going into this. You sure about taking the stand?

He paused, blew out some smoke and said, “No comment.”

Really? I’m surprised. You’re usually so talkative.

“When it’s all over, I’d be happy to talk to yous. Up until that point, no comment.”

When it
was
all over, Sal was, in fact, in handcuffs, two pairs needed to make it all the way behind his hulking back.

_______

Sal wasn’t the only accused molester in that courthouse that summer. John Esposito, simultaneously, decided to go a shorter route, and take the plea deal.

“For what purpose was this room constructed?” Catterson grilled John in court to elicit the allocution required for a guilty plea.

“It was constructed to hold Katie,” he answered sheepishly. “It was constructed to hold Katie?” “Yeah.” “When would you say construction was completed, sir?” “Actually, it wasn’t really completed.” “When did construction begin?” “It was approximately a year before.” “Was it your intention a year before to place Katie in that room?”

“Yes.”

“Now, prior to December nineteen twenty-eight, to your knowledge, did any other person or persons besides Katie and yourself enter or visit those premises? Just yes or no. I’m not going to ask you any names.”

“You said nineteen twenty-eight.” “Nineteen ninety-two. Excuse me.” “What was the question again, sir?” It was a peculiarly polite exchange.

“All right. Before Katie went in the room on December twenty-eighth, nineteen ninety-two…”

“Yeah?” “Other than yourself, had anyone else visited that room?” “No.” “After arriving at your residence, did there come a time when you decided to restrain Katie, intend to prevent her freedom, her movement? If you could answer the question. Did you make up your mind…?”

“Yes.” “At some particular time that you were going to hold her?” “Yes.” “And that in holding her you understood that would limit her freedom, her movement?”

“Yes.” “And at that time did you formally intend to put her in this room?”

“Yes.” “And you knew at that time that this was a place where, but for you, she was not likely to be found by anybody else because nobody knew about it and you knew that at that time?”

“Yes.”

If found guilty of first degree kidnapping, John could have been put away for twenty-five years to life. The plea deal would make him parole eligible after only fifteen years. Katie would have a say each and every time he was up for review, but the plea would give him a shot at one day dying in freedom.

“And how long was Katie kept in that room?” “Approximately sixteen days.”

“Sixteen days. During that time did you know that from time to time she was crying?”

“When I was there, she wasn’t crying. I didn’t know that she was crying when I wasn’t there.”

“Did she ever ask you or tell you that she wanted to get out of this place?”

“After a period of time, yes.” “Did she ever beg you to let her go?” “After a period of time, yes, after four or five days.” “And you knew, did you not, that she was in terror, afraid of being in the dark?”

“ I…It wasn’t really dark. But she was afraid, yes.” “You knew you were keeping her against her will, did you not?” “Yes.” “And in keeping her against her will, you did intend, did you not, John, to prevent her liberation by keeping her in a place where she was not likely to be found; isn’t that correct?”

“That’s correct.” “And you knew that you were interfering with her liberty?’ “Yes.” “At any time when she was in that room, did you place a chain around her neck?”

“No.” “You never did?” “ No.”

Catterson wasn’t stopped by apparent inconsistencies between Katie’s account and John’s. He was ticking off required elements of Kidnapping One and was satisfied the threshold was met.

“When Katie Beers was in the room, could her voice or shouts or cries for help be heard by anyone?”

“No.” “Did you insulate the room to make it soundproof?” “Yes.”

The judge cut in, satisfied. “Continuing under oath, John Esposito, as to count three of the indictment charging that you, on or about December twenty-eighth, nineteen ninety-two, in Suffolk County, abducted and
restrained Katherine Beers for a period of more than twelve hours, with the intent to terrorize her, kidnapping in the first degree, an A felony, how do you wish to plead?”

“Guilty.”

The coy child-like carpenter hung his head in shame.

On sentencing day, Tuesday, July 26, 1994, John would receive “a sentence that could never atone to Katie Beers for the crime that was committed.” Catterson spoke for posterity.

“It’s an artificial sentence at best,” he said reflectively, “but the balance of two interests. This defendant does present a patchwork personality. He is seemingly inoffensive, harmless, perhaps even inadequate. But in my estimation he has committed one of the greatest crimes of all time…to terrorize a child and betray a trust, this is unforgivable.

“To use other human beings, not as if they were human beings, an unfeeling utilization of another human as if they were an object is absolutely one of the most heinous sins, let alone crimes I could contemplate. He had no concern for the far reaching effects on this child, what nightmares and terrors she will suffer in the future because of his actions….I will agree to spare this child another spectacle—another ordeal. It is amazing that one child should suffer so much betrayal in such a short life.”

The District Attorney was speaking as much for the members of the media, squeezed tightly into benches in the courtroom, as he was for the record that would accompany John to Sing Sing Prison. Future parole boards would review Catterson’s words for the duration of John’s incarceration.

“Her trust has been severely damaged, we know that. She feels she hasn’t been protected, she feels violated. She cannot judge the trustworthiness of others.”

Katie, he said, had recoiled recently when he leaned over to simply offer her a grandfatherly goodbye kiss.