Katie Beers (22 page)

“She put up her hand to me. She doesn’t trust men!” the skilled prosecutor suddenly boomed. “It’s going to be a long time before that child can recover the trust of mankind.”

Katie then had her say a few handwritten words on a folded piece of paper, read into the record by Assistant DA Eileen Powers.

He made me feel dirty. I didn’t know what he was going to do
to me. Even though now Im safe, I still worry all the time. I worry about being taken away; I worry that someone might hurt me. John Esposito should go to jail for as long as he can. If another little girl were kidnapped or sexually abused, I would advise them to talk to an adult or go to the police. They should talk about everything with their therapist if they have one and they should try to be brave. I learned to be brave for being on my own. Now I feel safe with my foster family. Other people who made me feel safe were the district attorneys office, Mr. Catterson, Mary Bromley, the police, my friends and my family.

—Katherine Katie Marie Beers

It was all Katie would say publicly about John Esposito—for two decades.

Catterson then took the unusual step of commending defense counsel for their handling of the case, saying they
were
instrumental in convincing Esposito to, in the end, do the right thing. Andrew Siben offered a deferential head nod and spoke on behalf of his visibly crushed client.

“I have spent many, many hours with John Esposito since the charges have been brought and I am struck by his profound regret. In fact, before John took a plea, he repeatedly told me he didn’t want to cause Katie any more pain or suffering. John is a strange and perhaps perplexing individual, a sad individual, perhaps, some would say, a lost soul. There was no physical harm brought to Katie,” he maintained. John Esposito was not a terrible monster, but a person “who conceived of an idea which he believed was helping Katie Beers’ future.”

The floor was then handed to John, who spoke in a soft murmur of a sing-song voice.

“This is the first opportunity I have had to talk to you or anyone else who is interested in this case, including and most of all, Katie Beers. I know you know from reading my probation report a lot about my life and a lot about my personality, the things that have caused me to be the person that I am. I also want you to know that I am not the monster that people think I am. When I was in jail, I got to review articles that were written about me and I am not at all angry at them about the things that were said about me. If I was in their position, I probably would have thought the
same things that were written about me. Your Honor, believe it or not,” he fought back tears, “Katie Beers, is a very special person to me. In my own strange way…two years ago, I believed in my mind, that I was in some way going to help Katie Beers for the future. I knew full well and I admitted in court that what I did frightened Katie Beers a great deal. I knew that for sixteen days she was living in terrible fear and dread and it was very, very hard for Katie to believe that she was going to be released to the world again. I think Katie knows I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve this. I hope she comes through this okay. And I am happy she is with a family who truly cares about her. After being in jail for more than a year and a half, I have thought about Katie many, many times and what I did to her. I realize how terribly wrong I was. Not only did I really hurt Katie very much,” now he sobbed, “I hurt my family, Katie’s family, I caused the police many, many problems. The one thing that keeps me going is my intent to make it up to everyone when I get out. When my mother was alive and Katie was over my house, Katie would make things for her and talk to her. Katie always made my mother feel good. Later on my mother would tell me, ‘Son, you should do something to help Katie.’ So not only did I let down Katie, I let down my mother.” His voice was now cracking. “People think I’m not sorry for what I did. I’m very, very sorry. They’re wrong! It hurts me deeply knowing what I’ve done. People who know me know I have always cared about children. My only hope is one day Katie will find it in her heart to forgive me and let the real John Esposito, the one that really loved and truly cared about you…. I pray God blesses you and makes you grow, and Katie, I’m very sorry.” He sobbed, “Thank you.”

Judge Lefkowitz would have the last word, calling John Esposito “a classic case of arrested development.”

He had read the probation report which chronicled his overprotected life. It traced Esposito’s decline from coddled child to broken man.

John was a child who had been a complete surprise to his parents, Rose and Ralph Esposito. Rose delivered a full term baby on May 14, 1949, but her labor mysteriously continued. She had no idea she was carrying fraternal twins. Baby Ronald was strong and healthy, but John was a sickly three pounds and was not expected to live. His first days were touch and go, but John survived and Rose doted on him as he grew, always shy and skinny. Her coddling seemed warranted. She had lost her first son
in a sudden and dreadful manner. The child ran out to catch the ice cream truck and was hit by a car on Saxon Avenue. He was just five years old. Little Ralphie died in the street on Rose’s birthday.
²⁸

John never moved from that house on Saxon Avenue. He converted the garage into an apartment while his other brother Patrick and wife Joan lived in the front house with an increasingly ailing and overweight Rose. In 1990, Patrick died without warning. The Medical Examiner ruled it a cocaine overdose. Just a few months later, Rose also stopped breathing. John tried to resuscitate her but to no avail. He fainted in the hospital when doctors broke the news that his mother wouldn’t make it. He sobbed uncontrollably at her funeral. He spoke about suicide and hating God. The loss of a mother and brother in less than a year left him shattered. That’s when he began constructing the underground bunker.

Pale, his head down, John scampered through the courtroom door without looking back.

“Case on trial, the people versus Salvatore Inghilleri. All parties are present. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury have you reached a verdict?”

“Yes we have.”

Two weeks after John’s sentencing, it was now Sal’s turn to learn his fate.

“The defendant will please rise and face the jury.” “Count one, sexual abuse in the first degree?” “ Guilty.” “Count two, sexual abuse in the first degree?” “Guilty.” The guilties continued until Sal sank back into his seat wearing a vacant look. He was sweating profusely. It again took two pairs of handcuffs, linked together, to lock his hands around his back.

On sentencing day, Sal shuffled into that courtroom wearing drab prison green and staring up at the ceiling. The aviator shades were gone. One look at her son dressed as an inmate and Sal’s mother, suffering heart palpitations, fell out of the courtroom doors and into the hallway. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital.

DA Catterson was merciless. “I have searched long and hard to find some counterbalancing compassion or socially acceptable traits that would
merit Your Honor’s mercy,” he said before sentence was pronounced. “I found none. I find a man who has blamed everyone he has encountered but himself. He has blamed his wife. He has blamed society. He’s blamed his health, the publicity. He has blamed his own appearance and the child’s mother, but not once just possibly did he say he might be a little bit at fault. He has blamed an eleven-year-old child for concocting lies against him. How low can one person sink?

“He has robbed her of her childhood. He systematically looted her grandmother of her meager pittance of a social security—forcing her to take a mortgage he knew she couldn’t pay off …a man who has flouted the laws of this state. He wasn’t paying taxes for eight years either, a total disregard for the laws of society.

“I ask your honor to send a message to the community that each and every one of us no matter what our personal failing may be…we cannot victimize children and the elderly. I ask you now to consider sending a message to the Salvatore Inghilleris of this world that a civilized society will not tolerate his conduct, his abuse of children and the elderly, and the flouting of the laws of this nation and community. This man has no socially redeeming character or talents. He deserves whatever the law can impose upon him…. I wish that I had the courage to ask that child to go back in and seek a superseding indictment that would have told the
whole
story. It was bad enough she had to testify, and for that act alone he should receive the maximum penalty.

“Oh, before I finish, under the law the victim is allowed to make a statement. Her feelings about this defendant.”

Eileen Collins again stood and read Katie’s handwritten words aloud.

The truth is he was a big fat liar. He should go to jail for as long as he can. I know he is guilty of a lot more things. I was afraid of him all my life and everybody in my house was afraid of him. He was a fighting man, always fighting with someone about something. Some nights I could barely get to sleep because of his fighting with Linda. One time he asked me to lie to the police because he and my brother were fighting. I always knew when it was going to happen. I could just feel it. I just wanted to get it over with. He should have gone to jail a long time ago. If some other girl or boy were living in that situation, I would advise them to talk to an adult
or go to the police.

—Katherine Katie Marie Beers

Sal surprised everyone when asked by the Judge if he had anything to say prior to sentencing. He looked squarely into the camera lens pointed his way, shrugged his shoulders and opened his mouth.

“First I’d like to say I’m sorry to everyone for putting yous all through this situation. I feel sorry that little Katherine Beers had to take the stand and testify. But I guess it was my only alternative to try to clear my name.” He shrugged again. “I ..I don’t know the right words to say this, but uh, I accept whatever verdict or sentence I get. I’m sorry this situation had to take place. I’d like to say to my family in the courtroom, I’d like to thank them for standing by me and hopefully I can get my life back together after my time is served.”

The probation report was brutal. Judge Lefkowitz read parts into the record:

There is little of a positive nature to be said about this defendant who reportedly has a history of preying on weak and vulnerable individuals. Inghilleri …is a manipulative and amoral individual who has little insight into his behavior or the consequences of his actions on others.

Sal’s smug gamble had failed miserably. He was sent upstate for four to twelve years instead of the two and a third he had been offered, if he had spared Katie a trial.

Outside court, a woman wept. I asked her to comment. “It’s not enough,” she told me. She had a stake in the case. Her own three children said they were also abused by Sal when she hired Linda as a baby sitter.

“He got one year for Katie and one year for each of my three. It wasn’t enough!” said Linda Butler, her name a strange coincidence.

How would you describe Sal Inghilleri?

“As an animal.”

What would have been an adequate punishment for him?

“Twelve years is not enough. When he gets out, he’ll just do the same thing to another child.”

Together we did the addition. Sal would be forty-nine when he would be eligible for parole and Katie would be in college, if she were
able to overcome the damage and lead a normal life. Linda Butler hung on the word “if.”

The first four years passed without a mention of Sal Inghilleri in the headlines. Not even his contentious appearance before the parole board at the Collins Correctional Facility in 1998 made news.
²⁹
He told

the Commissioners he had sexually abused Katie only once.

“Why did you commit this crime, sir?” “It just happened.” “Don’t give us that. We don’t want to hear that. Things of this nature don’t just happen.”

“I was standing in the bathroom,” Sal said, as he spoke before the panel, “the little girl came in, I was standing there and I had just come out of the shower. I was standing there nude, and she looked at me and— she just looked at me and I said to her, what are you looking at, and she says I’m looking at you. I said you act like you want to touch it. And she continued to look at me and then…”

“She what?” “She continued to look at me, and I says, please leave, and she didn’t leave right away. I says, well, since you’re not leaving, why don’t you touch it, and she did, and I allowed it to happen.”

“Do you believe your story that you’re telling us today?” “Yes.” “You really do? That is a pathetically woeful story.” “Well that’s…” “It needs a lot of work.” “That’s what happened.”

The Commissioners were not buying it, and Sal was too slow to get it.

“You didn’t call this child into your bedroom when you were lying in your bed naked?”

“She was never in my bedroom. That child was never in my bedroom.”

“She was ten at the time?” “Yes, I believe she was ten years old, she had just turned ten.” “Okay, you never asked this child to put cream on your penis and rub it?”

“No, I had—let me explain something. I had—when I came out of the shower, I still do this to this date; I put baby oil on it, cream on it, cream moisturizer. I had the cream on already when she came in. The house that we lived in had no door locks. They…they just used to come in and out.”

“And this child was so infatuated with your body that she wanted to touch your penis?”

“No.” “Is that your story to us?” “All I’m saying is that she was looking at me and I asked her, what are you looking at, and she didn’t answer me and she didn’t leave right away. I.. I says, well, since you’re—you know, you’re staring at me, I just asked her, said she looked like she wanted to touch it. So I said it twice and…”

“Why would you say that to a ten-year-old girl? Why would you even say that, you look like you want to touch it?”

“Sir, I don’t know what possessed me to say that.” “Alright.” “And all I know is it ruined my life and it ruined the little girl’s life.”

“Did you get any sexual gratification from this?” “No, sir, absolutely not.”