The Savage City (49 page)

On February 12, 1972, with the shock of the Foster-Laurie killings still very much in the air, Whitmore once again walked into court to hear his fate determined by a judge.

It had been almost nine years since the Career Girls Murders,
eight and a half since that fateful night when Whitmore was led into the Seventy-third Precinct station house in Brownsville by two policemen. Twenty-three hours later, he had signed the longest written confession in NYPD history. Before that, however, Elba Borrero had given her much-contested identification of Whitmore as the man who tried to rape her. The questions surrounding that identification had become the tiny glimmer of hope on which Whitmore pinned his daily dreams of exoneration.

Attorneys and civil rights activists had tried everything on his behalf. Most recently, Myron Beldock had argued the case before the New York State Court of Appeals. He had come close, but Whitmore's conviction was upheld by a 4–3 vote. This led to a final Hail Mary pass, an appeal to the United States Supreme Court to hear the case. Beldock had filed his papers; the arguments had all been made. Now, at the federal courthouse in the Eastern District of New York, George Whitmore would learn whether the Supreme Court would free the “Negro drifter” from Brooklyn.

He had few supporters in the courtroom. George and Aida were estranged, heading toward divorce. His brother Gerald was upstate doing time on a burglary conviction. His longtime attorneys, Miller and Beldock, were there, as was his mother, who had stuck by her son through every trial.

It took all of thirty seconds for the court to deliver its verdict. Whitmore's appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.

Whitmore was beyond tears. It appeared as though his fight was over. He was put on a Department of Corrections bus and taken to the Brooklyn House of Detention, where he was held for a few days before being shipped upstate to Green Haven prison.

A week after he was returned to custody, Whitmore was visited by Selwyn Raab, the former newspaper reporter. Raab, who had never stopped following the case, was not surprised by the Supreme Court ruling. “All those stories in the press about the black liberation movement and the Black Liberation Army—that did not help Whitmore's chances,” remembered Raab. “It created a climate that made it difficult for people like Whitmore to get a fair hearing.”

At Green Haven, Raab found a young man who had given up hope. Until now, George had always found a way to stay positive, but the years of legal struggle had taken away his spirit. George showed some curi
osity about the movie that was being made of Raab's book, but even that was a source of disappointment. The project was now being produced by Universal Studios as a TV movie for CBS, with Abby Mann as screenwriter and executive producer. Universal had promised to hire Whitmore as a technical consultant, but they'd reneged on the offer and never paid Whitmore a dime, even though the production was almost complete. Raab promised to look into it.

“Next time you come, can you remember to bring cigarettes?” asked George. It was his standard parting request to all visitors: cigarettes seemed to be the only thing he had left to care about. “You won't forget?”

“Sure, George,” said Raab. “I won't forget.”

Raab left the prison more convinced than ever that Whitmore was innocent.
There must be something to do about this,
he thought,
some way to make it right.

AFTER VISITING WHITMORE
at Green Haven prison, Selwyn Raab put in a call to Myron Beldock. As the journalist and the lawyer hashed over the case, searching for anything that could form the basis of a new appeal, they agreed that one last thread was still dangling, one detail that had never been adequately investigated: Elba Borrero's sister-in-law, Celeste Viruet.

From the beginning of Whitmore's ordeal, none of the many patrolmen, detectives, and assistant D.A.s involved in his trials and hearings had ever mentioned Viruet's existence. It was only after Beldock joined Whitmore's team that the handwritten note about Viruet in Patrolman Isola's notebook came to the defense lawyers' attention. Beldock had discovered the entry almost by chance:

That one scrawled line was like a beacon: a description of the assailant that conflicted with Whitmore's appearance in every detail except for the fact that he was a black man. Was the description from Borrero or from Viruet? The question had never been answered. No one acting on Whitmore's behalf had ever spoken with Celeste Viruet. She was a phantom. Of course, it was quite possible that there was nothing to it;
if questioned, the woman might ultimately back up her sister-in-law's account of that night. But the very fact that police investigators had never conducted a follow-up interview with her—that Viruet was never produced to corroborate Borrero's version or even mentioned in court by detectives or prosecutors—led Raab and Beldock to suspect that there was a reason she'd become a phantom. Chances were, her version didn't fit the prosecutors' version of the crime.

“I'm not sure who came up with the idea first,” Beldock said, “but Selwyn and I both realized that we needed to find Celeste Viruet. She was our last hope.”

It wasn't going to be easy. No one from Elba Borrero's family was going to help Whitmore's lawyers find Celeste Viruet. She was a transient Puerto Rican who lived part of the year in Brooklyn and part of the year in her home country. After some preliminary inquiries in and around Brooklyn, Beldock and Raab came up empty. She didn't live there anymore; she hadn't been seen by anyone in a long time.

Finally, the two men pooled their resources and hired a private investigator—a former FBI agent with the unlikely name of Richard “Dick” Tracy. The P.I. with the famous cartoon name followed Celeste Viruet's trail to the Bronx, where she had moved after leaving Brooklyn. But Viruet didn't live in the Bronx anymore. She had moved back to Puerto Rico. An acquaintance told the P.I. the two things she knew: that Viruet lived in Isla Verde, and that she owned a store with the word
naranja
(Spanish for “orange”) in the title. That's all they had to go on.

Dick Tracy turned the information over to Raab and Beldock. They were on the case.

Raab came up with a way to finance most of the trip to Puerto Rico. For the last year he had been working as a segment producer for a newsmagazine show on public television called
The 51st State
. The show had debuted in February 1972 as a one-hour program, airing four nights a week. Staffed largely by former print journalists,
The 51st State
was designed as a forum for longer and more in-depth stories than those shown on network news programs. Raab persuaded the producers to supply him with a modest budget to produce a segment on the Whitmore case, revolving around the hunt for Celeste Viruet. He would travel to Puerto Rico with Maria Mena, a young reporter at Channel 13 who spoke fluent Spanish; Myron Beldock; and a two-man crew.

The capital city of San Juan was seasonably warm when they arrived.
Raab, Beldock, and the crew all stayed at the same oceanfront hotel. The morning after they arrived, Raab and Beldock met poolside to strategize. They weren't sure where to begin.

“Well,” said the lawyer, “why don't we start by asking the first person we meet if they know of a shop with the word
naranja
in the name?”

Raab chuckled. He thought Beldock was joking.

“I'm serious,” said Beldock. To illustrate his point, Beldock asked the busboy, who spoke passable English, if he knew of such a store.

“Yes,” said the busboy. “In Isla Verde there is a store named La Naranjal, the orange grove.”

Raab and Beldock looked at each other.

“Do you know this place?” Raab asked the busboy. “Have you been there yourself?”

“Si, señor. I know the place. It is owned by my wife.”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Beldock. “Did you say the store is owned by your wife?”

“Yes, sir, that is what I say.”

Raab said, “Your wife, if I may ask, what is her name?”

“My wife's name is Celeste Viruet.”

 

THE TWO MEN
and their translator made arrangements to meet the busboy later that day. He led them from the hotel to La Naranjal, a store in the nearby resort area of Isla Verde. There they met Celeste Viruet, a simple, plainspoken women in her midtwenties.

The translator explained to Viruet why the two men had come from New York City to see her. Viruet did not seem surprised. Raab and Beldock began by asking questions about what she saw on the night of the alleged assault. Right away she mentioned that her sister-in-law Elba Borrero had told her things that no one else had known—including the fact that her assailant that night had spoken to her in Spanish as well as English. At the time of the assault, George Whitmore did not know a word of Spanish. And she volunteered other startling details to Raab and Beldock, all of it in a matter-of-fact manner. They couldn't believe what they were hearing.

Given the notoriety of the Whitmore case, and the fact that it may have involved corrupt behavior on the part of powerful municipal officials, Viruet would not agree to do an on-camera interview. She would,
however, answer any questions they had, and she allowed them to audio-tape the interview. Over the next two days, Raab and Beldock asked Viruet every question they could think of, using a tape recorder and taking notes.

Viruet had witnessed the assault on Borrero. Though she hadn't gotten a good look at the face of the assailant, her description in terms of height, weight, and clothing didn't match any of the identifications supplied by the various police accounts. Other than the two people involved in the attack that night, she was the only known eyewitness to an alleged felony assault—but she had been interviewed by police only once, and never questioned again or even contacted by anyone from the district attorney's office. It was as if she didn't exist.

If nothing else, the fact that Viruet was known to investigators—but never produced at any of Whitmore's many trials or hearings—was possible grounds to reopen his case. Beyond that, the substance of her statement was that Borrero had told her a version of her story that was substantially different from what she had been contending in court all these years. If that could be proven, Whitmore's conviction for assault and attempted rape could even be dismissed.

Raab and Beldock returned to New York City with what they hoped was the raw material to blow the Borrero identification out of the water. They were energized by their improbable discovery—which had descended upon them as if by divine intervention—but they knew that any appeal for a new trial, or even a reexamination of evidence, would be a long shot at best. Whitmore's previous appeals had already been dismissed at every level of the legal system, right up to the United States Supreme Court. A judge could dismiss a new appeal on any number of grounds—that it was too late, or that Viruet's statement was not relevant, or for any number of other technical reasons.

Beldock filed papers in the appellate division in Brooklyn court seeking a reexamination of the evidence in the case, alerting the court that “important new evidence” had come to light. Meanwhile, Raab and his production team at
The 51st State
began splicing together their minidocumentary on the strange case of George Whitmore, which they hoped to have broadcast on public television in time to have some bearing on the judge's ruling.

They had one new development going for them: a new district attorney had taken over in Brooklyn. After ten years in the office, Aaron
Koota, who had taken such a hard line on the Whitmore case, had decided to step down. The persecution of Whitmore, from the time of his arrest through the Edmonds and Borrero trials, had spanned much of Koota's tenure. In Raab's eyes, the D.A. had “made a fool of himself” by staking his reputation on the conviction of Whitmore even after the circumstances of George's arrest and bogus confession were exposed. Koota had chosen to become the defender of a system from another era, a clubhouse environment in which a black teenager accused of horrific crimes, facing the death penalty, could be assigned counsel based on the fact that the judge and the defense lawyer were members of the same political club.

The new Brooklyn D.A., Eugene Gold, did not carry the same ideological baggage as Koota. His arrival as top prosecutor was the sort of sea change that criminal defense attorneys dream about. Eugene Gold had no vested interest in maintaining the status quo; it wasn't his regime that had run Whitmore, the hapless Negro, through the proverbial prosecutorial gauntlet. It looked like the Whitmore case might finally get something it badly needed—a breath of fresh air, and a reason for hope.

 

TO DHORUBA BIN
Wahad, hope was an illusory concept. He'd been hopeful once. Back in the fall of 1968, when Eldridge Cleaver first came to town as a candidate for president, the Black Panther Party seemed like an idea whose time had come. Party chapters were sprouting up all over the country; the possibility of global revolution seemed to be within reach. Student protesters, antiwar activists, and leading lights of the counterculture had begun to coalesce around similar movements all over Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Disenfranchised people all over the world were rising up, and the concept of black liberation was a powerful and attractive component of the international groundswell. In New York, the movement revolved around the Black Panther Party, and the party revolved around leaders like Dhoruba, who was committed enough to put his life on the line.

Then, in a short period of time, that dream went up in smoke. The philosophical differences between the East and West Coast factions of the party might have been resolved if the counterintelligence efforts of BOSS and COINTELPRO hadn't exacerbated them. The infighting, in turn, had brought about a bad case of revolutionary suicide. Cops killed
Panthers, Panthers killed Panthers, Panthers killed cops—the vicious cycle seemed to take the struggle from its goals of civil rights, and then Black Power, into the realm of revenge. The big payback.

Dhoruba had been at the center of the maelstrom, and now he was suffering the consequences—charged with an assortment of crimes that could put him behind bars for multiple lifetimes.

By nature, Bin Wahad was a fighter, a South Bronx survivor who often quoted Frederick Douglass: “Without struggle, there can be no progress.” He was preconditioned to see his current predicament as part of the broader struggle. Had he been charged only with the Triple-O robbery and his role in Sam Napier's murder, Dhoruba might have been depressed; after all, those were crimes he'd actually committed. By charging him with the double shooting of police officers, though, the prosecutors were making it political—giving Dhoruba, his attorney, and his supporters reason to view his plight as another chapter in the ongoing fight against racism and corruption in the criminal justice system.

Throughout 1972, the legal maneuvers came fast and furious. Under legal advice from his attorney, Robert Bloom, Bin Wahad pleaded guilty to the armed robbery and attempted grand larceny charges. In a Bronx courtroom, he was given seven years in prison, the sentence to begin immediately.

In March, Dhoruba traveled to Queens, where he and three other defendants were tried for the murder of Sam Napier. The trial was defense attorney Bloom's first opportunity to hear and cross-examine Pauline Joseph, who would become a fixture at trials involving Dhoruba and others associated with the BLA over the next few years. Joseph described how a group of revolutionaries left 757 Beck Street to burn down the
Black Panther
offices in Queens, and then returned to tell her that Butch Mason had shot Napier in the head. But her testimony was shaky, and, without an eyewitness to the actual shooting, prosecutors were unable to present a coherent account of who did what. After a six-week trial and seventeen hours of deliberation, the jury announced that it was hopelessly deadlocked. With ten jurors leaning toward acquittal and two toward a guilty verdict, the trial ended in a hung jury.

The Queens D.A. immediately reindicted Dhoruba and the others and announced they would be retried on the same charges.

Dhoruba was being held at the Manhattan House of Detention, better known as the Tombs. He eventually pled guilty to a reduced charge
of attempted manslaughter in the second degree for his role in the Napier killing, receiving a four-year sentence to run concurrent with his grand larceny plea conviction. As with the Bronx charges, Dhoruba was willing to accept culpability for crimes in which he had played a role, in order to better fight the charges for which he claimed he was being framed.

In November, a smattering of protesters gathered on the sidewalk outside 100 Centre Street, where the long-running Panther Twenty-one trial had occurred two years before. This time, Dhoruba was on trial alone for the shooting of police officers Thomas Curry and Nicholas Binetti. A group calling itself the Committee to Defend Richard “Dhoruba” Moore tried to rally the troops, but the days of rambunctious support for a Black Panther in New York were over. Among the small group of supporters was Kisha Green, Dhoruba's common-law wife, who had been held in jail as a material witness for several months, even while she was pregnant with Dhoruba's child. She had recently given birth to a baby boy—a child whom Dhoruba, the father, hadn't yet met.