Winter of frozen dreams (23 page)

The DA's office had withstood an avalanche of criticism for the plea bargain of Sam Cerro. Doyle had publicly explained his rationale, yet the feeling persisted that a drug dealer and acknowledged gambling kingpin had been treated softly in exchange for a dubious guarantee of testimony by a thug who earned a livelihood promoting vice.

Because of the delay in bringing Hoffman to trial, Cerro had already served his six months and was out on probation. There was now no leverage with Ken Curtis that could assure his testimony would be as powerful as in the John Doe and prelim hearings of over a year ago.

The DA had no recourse if Curtiss memory should suddenly become fuzzy. Furthermore, Curtiss character was anything but unimpeachable. How could the DA protect him from Eisenbergs ferocious cross-examination? And if the main witness was assailed, did the rest of the case totter? And if Hoffman was acquitted, how was justice served?

The television cameras provided an added pressure. The presence of video was a precedent. The Hoffman case was the first televised murder trial in Wisconsin history. Clips of the proceedings would highlight nightly newscasts. A cable TV company was broadcasting the trial in its entirety. The public would see a true courtroom soap opera as the revelations about love and sex and insurance money were aired.

Reputations would be earned or tarnished. Errors in judgment or strategy would occur in plain view. Neither a stenographers transcript nor a newspaper article showed a lawyer stuttering over a question, or stalling for time as he tried to think how best to interrogate a hostile witness, or tediously debating an esoteric technicality of evidentiary law and having his motion rejected by the court. Burr must have fretted over the cameras unflinching eye. Court records and newspapers did not show pockmarks, the frayed collar of a pin-striped suit, or a face etched with cynicism and overwork.

Perhaps the most profound pressure put on the senior assistant DA was exerted by his own ego. John Burr had never lost a homicide trial. He had an almost perfect record in major cases of all kinds. He was tough, and he obtained convictions. He respected the framework of the judicial system and believed it delivered justice to individuals and to the society it purported to serve. The system

was not without flaws, but the system was not rigged. Burr played the game hard and fair. He respected his opponents and was respected in return.

Don Eisenberg, however, was beyond the limits of Burrs tolerance. The veteran prosecutor would never admit his disdain for Eisenberg, for that would be granting Eisenberg a satisfaction he didn't wish him to have, but Burr despised the defense attorney.

To Burr, Eisenberg argued his cases in the papers, challenged judges, humiliated witnesses, was uncooperative in pretrial negotiations. Burr thought Eisenberg worried more about posture and publicity than about what was best for his client. In Burrs opinion, acclaim, not acquittal, was Eisenbergs priority.

Burr resented the defense attorneys conspicuous style and was irked by the defense attorneys renown, which he considered the result of unabashed self-promotion and media hype. There were better defense attorneys in town, and they didn't charge $120 an hour.

Yet Eisenberg was a formidable force in a courtroom. Clever and quick, he could transform a trial into a street brawl. He intimidated witnesses, and he was capable of stupefying a jury with his smooth, extemporaneous talk.

John Burr had a difficult case and a dangerous foe. He couldn't tolerate losing, especially not to Don Eisenberg.

Wednesday evening faded as the prosecution team discussed strategy in Burrs office. The vestiges of dinner—pizza crusts and Pepsi cans—littered a desk. Burr puffed a cigarette and stared out the window. A pink lacquer glossed Lake Monona's surface as the sun dropped quickly in the west. A water-skier in a wet suit skimmed over the water, waves curling from his skis like swirls of filigree.

Chris Spencer tuned in a Milwaukee Brewers game for distraction. Diagrams of the Davies and Hoffman apartments were taped to the wall. Propped on a file cabinet was a chart of the first days probable witnesses. Photographs—color prints of the snowbank on Tomahawk

Ridge where Berges body was discovered and the snowbank behind 638 State Street where blood matching Berges type was found two-and-one-half inches above the pavement in January, on the third examination—were balanced precariously on an empty Styrofoam coffee cup. Photocopies of Barbara Hoffman's phone records for the dates surrounding the days of Berges and Daviess deaths, which had been subpoenaed from Wisconsin Bell, were thumbtacked to a bulletin board. On an index card Spencer had penciled apparently extraneous but possibly important items of interest and stuck the label onto the board, which became a hodgepodge of miscellaneous information.

After reviewing the list of exhibits and prospective witnesses for the opening day, Burr and Spencer considered their opposing attorney. They decided to refrain from sparring with Eisenberg.

It was John Burrs strong belief that juries permitted defense lawyers to posture loudly and gesticulatively but that they were suspicious of flamboyant prosecutors. Society had elevated defense lawyers to the status of legendary folk heroes, whereas prosecutors quietly and efficiently amassed evidence and performed their duties. His own style fit the stereotype well.

Burr was sincere and persuasive. He dressed and spoke simply and with decorum. His image contrasted sharply with that of the brash Eisenberg. The prosecutors decided to emphasize this difference and hopefully to exploit it to their advantage.

They also decided to allow the defense attorney all the opportunity to harangue that he might want. Burr felt that Eisenberg often talked himself into trouble. He became entranced with the power of his own words and had difficulty shutting himself off. He might get nasty with a witness the jury perceived sympathetically. He might challenge a judge for the domain of the courtroom and alienate a jury. Rather than fight to contain Eisenberg's tirades, they would let him pursue them.

On June 19th the trial commenced.

As Burr addressed the court, Eisenberg was a frenzy of tiny and perpetual motions—scribbling points of rebuttal, paging through a ponderous notebook, rummaging about in his briefcase, pursing his lips, drumming his fingertips together as if supplying percussion for the pros-ecutors drone. Rings ornamented Eisenbergs fingers and reflected the court lights, slivering the wattage into magnificent prisms.

Torphys courtroom was jammed to overflowing. Fire marshals cleared out people who lined the walls, content to stand. Except for the camera and audio crew, everyone had to have a seat. Television monitors were hooked up in the hallway so that spectators too late to cram inside, as well as secretaries, office clerks, and lawyers on coffee breaks, could watch the drama. Bailiffs controlled the traffic in and out. Ordinarily gallery space would have been reserved for friends and family of the defendant, but strangely, Barbara Hoffman had no one in attendance to lend support or encouragement. Save for her attorney, she was alone.

A front aisle was designated for representatives of the press, but the majority of the media camped in a conference room across the hallway where special monitors had been arranged and where they could smoke or gossip when the proceedings got tedious.

Eisenberg s pronouncement to the contrary notwithstanding, two years of hearings, motions, and postponements had not dispelled public fascination with Barbara Hoffman's tawdry saga. The legal delays in bringing the former massage parlor masseuse to trial merely fueled the conjecture and mystery surrounding her character and the nature of Berge's and Daviess deaths.

Every preliminary hearing, it seemed, had revealed new developments or uncovered a startling discovery that demanded a reevaluation of the circumstances and a rea-

lignment of the players. Shadowy figures lurked on the periphery. The insurance agent who had sold Davies and Hoffman the $750,000 policy and then skipped to Mexico had successfully eluded police interrogation, yet he granted a telephone interview to a local newspaper in which he denied any wrongdoing. The friend who had originally told Curtis of Barbara's botulism plot remained nameless and had left the state to avoid a subpoena. Anonymous sources familiar with the police investigation whispered about chagrined college professors and business executives who had cosigned bank loans or written Barbara personal checks for thousands of dollars and now feared that their sexual liaisons with the notorious Barbie would be aired from the witness stand.

Rumor and embellishment were rampant. Women who had worked in the parlors, who knew Ken Curtis and his ruthless manner, wondered if Barbara Hoffman was simply a pawn in some grand conspiracy or if this was Curtis's twisted form of revenge for Barbaras brash defiance in leaving the parlor scene. Others speculated that the marriage-Mexico-botulism plot was an elaborate concoction by Ken Curtis to acquire a lenient sentence for his nefarious friend, Sam Cerro. Police and prosecutors put little faith in such gossip.

A few people intimate with Madison's prosperous sex business guessed that Curtis might have had an ulterior motive, that he feared Hoffman as a potential rival in the parlor trade and used his information not only to aid Cerro but to eliminate her threat. It was a fascinating speculation.

On her 1975 income tax return Barbara Hoffman, student and female counselor, claimed $22,112.50 in total wages, with Jans Health Spa as the employer. This was two-and-a-half times the amount Jerry Davies had earned as a shipping clerk for the U.W. with almost ten years' experience. Reliable estimates placed Barbaras real earnings at probably twice the total reported, if tips, outside work, and unrecorded hours were included. After four years as an impoverished college student the massage

parlors had been a windfall. And if a windfall for the lowly counselors, the business had to be extremely lucrative for the ownership.

Despite a loose management style—some nights Curtis neglected to pick up the days receipts, leaving a nervous receptionist to hustle home with $4,000 or $5,000 in her purse—the parlors flourished. On Friday and Saturday nights customers couldn't get in the door to pay their cash and shoot their sperm fast enough. Madison supported a dozen massage spas and escort services, several bars that featured topless or nude dancing, a smattering of adult bookstores. Sex was a thriving commerce.

Perhaps Barbara Hoffman wanted a larger share of the prosperity than what was apportioned to a masseuse. It was no secret that when not dizzied by drugs and sex Barbara possessed a facile intellect, and it was no secret that she did not foresee performing sexual acts as a permanent livelihood.

Using a lawyer friend to front for her, she had attempted to buy a silent interest in Visions, one of Curtis s burlesque bars. Before the deal was consummated, Curtis learned of Barbaras involvement and squashed the sale. He resented her ambition, resented her defiance in luring clients outside the confines of the parlor, where he couldn't extract his hefty cut. He vowed revenge. Because his influence in the skin trade was extensive, other maneuvers by Barbara to quietly gain control of a massage parlor operation were stifled. No one was willing to risk Curtiss animosity. Barbara was effectively excluded from the domain.

Some observers of the drama attached a deep psychological significance to this defeat and frustration. Spurned by Curtis as a lover, stymied by him from entering the sex business, Barbara had internalized her rage and rechan-neled it. Berge and Davies were chosen as her road to riches.

In the two years between the crimes and the trial Barbara Hoffman went from newsworthy to notorious. She became an article of fascination, regarded more with

curiosity than with suspicion. She was a brilliant schoolgirl led astray, a drugged-out dolly, a cold, conniving vixen, a victim of male exploitation and abuse. Perhaps each portrait contained a bit of the truth.

In the courtroom the TV camera panned from the prosecutor—in a dark suit, his tempered, reasoned voice speaking harsh accusations—to the defendant. Barbara wore a softly tailored mauve suit, pumps, and a blouse with frills. Her appearance behind the oak defense table was serene. The tortoiseshell glasses obscured any hint of fear and added a detached, scholarly aura to her face. She could have been a graduate student politely listening to a guest lecturer. Her composure seemed like a second skin. The flashbulbs, the reporters' questions, the throng of spectators had not frazzled her when she'd entered the courthouse. Her slender frame had knifed through the maddening ensemble as if encased in ice. Not an ounce of her cool had melted under the judges gavel or the TV cameras hot glare.

John Burr's opening volley contained no surprises. "Miss Hoffman is charged with first-degree murder. First-degree murder, there are two elements. First, that Miss Hoffman intended to kill Mr. Berge and Mr. Davies. Second, that she caused the death of each."

The prosecutors tone was subdued as he outlined the states case. "We're going to take you back to Christmas Day 1977. The first witness you'll meet, Detective John Cloutier, who had been unlucky enough to draw Christmas duty, was downstairs, in this building, the Madison Police Department. At that time he came into contact with a—with, the evidence will show, a thirty-one-year-old $10,000-a-year U.W. Department of Audio-Visual Instruction employee. . . . Mr. Davies took him out to Black-hawk Ski Jump, pointed to a mound of snow. In that mound of snow Detective Cloutier pointed to the nude body of a white male. . . . The evidence will further show, ladies and gentlemen, that late 1976, early 1977, application was made for a six-figure insurance policy for G. Davies. ... A $750,000 policy was issued to Mr. Davies in

March 1977. The beneficiary, his estate. A short time later the ownership in and beneficiary of that policy was transferred to Barbara Hoffman. ... A Mr. Ken Curtis will be testifying that he told Miss Hoffman he was aware of a plot for her to kill a person. . . . Miss Hoffman confirmed that she did in fact plan to kill someone with botulism after first marrying him and taking him to Mexico. She told him she had planned to kill this person for $750,000 in life insurance/ 7