June 11, 2024 • 43 mins
Steve and Dax dive into the case that made Louie Scarcella famous.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi. Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The
Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
(00:22):
which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
to share this story of a man who fought the
law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
(00:44):
of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey Burden fans, I'm Dax Devlin and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Welcome to another bonus episode of The Burden. As always,
would love to hear your thoughts about the series the bonuses.
If you feel like sharing, call us at eight three
three eight Burden.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Today, we're diving into a case that changed everything for
Louis Scarcela at least, and for the members of the
jail house law firm as well though, and maybe even
for Brooklyn Criminal Justice. This is the first of twenty
one Scarcella cases to be overturned. You could say it
opened the floodgates.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And I'll tell you it's a really good episode. And
here's the reason. The information is new, the stakes are high,
and the people involved care. Plus, we got a hold
of some really unusual secret tape. You'll hear that towards
the end of the episode. It raises a question that's
hung over the series. What did the district attorney do
(01:59):
think You're going to be surprised by the answer.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
In this episode, we offer three points of view on
the same case. We start with Louise, which inevitably means
we start with a dead body. In this case, it's
that of a revered Brooklyn rabbi.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
This was the murder of the century, a rabbi getting
killed in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This is the case that made Louis famous, TV famous.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
At least it's nineteen ninety one. There's something like fifty
detectives assigned to this case, and they come up with
bubkiss nothing. Enter Louis and his partner.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
I was born in Brooklyn, got married in Brooklyn, and
I raised my kids here. I'm Italian, proud of it.
I'm proud of my neighborhood. I don't like seeing it
get missed around.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
This is audio from an early nineties nationally syndicated TV
show called Cops. It broadcasts great detective work from around
the country. The guy talking guys is none other than
Louis Scarcella himself. He's on the show to talk about
the David Ranta case, the case that made him fact.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Two small time stick up men, guys we call street monts.
It shows in this particular day for the biggest score
of their lives.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
I should look for pocket space, shut up and do
what I tell y'all.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
As actors recreate the scenes, Scarcella narrates the action.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
The situation here involved the Diamond and Jewelry company courier.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, he took a quarter of a
million dollars worth of golden diamonds in a cardboard box
and flew.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
To Santo Domingo for processing. On screen, we see the
courier leave the building and head towards his car. The
two stickup men are waiting for him. The courier gets
in his car and one of the stickup men puts
a gun to the window. The car now, but the
courier manages to peel off. When the stickup man runs
(04:06):
back to the street after the car, his partner is
nowhere to be found in the car. He needs a
getaway car.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Rabbi Haskell Wurtzburger, an Auschwitz survivor whose family had perished
in the concentration camps, was going to school to open
it for morning prayers.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
The stickup man approaches the Rabbi and his part.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
He shoots him, steals the car, and takes off. The
Rabbi lies bleeding in the street.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Two days later, Rabbi Wurzburger died, and the anger of
not only the Williamsburg Jewish community, but the entire city
of New York become a call with one voice to
find his killer.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Dozens of detectives that fan out across the city. They
come up with nothing, and then they call him the
big dogs, Scarcel and his partner Steve Camill.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Hey, luie, this guy must have been a crackhead.
Speaker 6 (05:04):
I mean the panic like this kill a guy for
his car, I know, but the jeweler. Sounds like a
job a pro would do, and nobody knows his way around.
Try a score like this without wheel Man.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, but a pro wouldn't shoot an innocent bystander.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Plus he was just playing crazy.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
By the way, this city's going not to make sense anymore.
You're on the northomal side.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Of the airk.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Eventually they catch a break. As Louis told us the story,
he was in a bar with his favorite cops and prosecutors,
having a good old time blowing off steam. His beeper
goes off. It's a cop calling with a tip a
stick up artist he knows fits the profile of the
guy they're looking for. This is a guy named Alan Bloom.
(05:48):
So scar Selling his partner rushed from the bar to
bring in Alan Bloom for questioning.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
Listen, like I was saying, we got this case this Rabbi,
I can't tell you what that is to.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Us, and from what I hear, you could use a
little l.
Speaker 8 (06:07):
The next day we arrange for a takeout order.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
This gave us a chance to talk some more and
to build up his trust.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
A takeout order that's what allows the detectives to take
a suspected criminal out of jail for official purposes.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
Where you guys taking me DA's office. I hear you
been a busy boy forties stick up some counting. Yeah,
I got some expensive habits.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Expensive habits he's referring to crack addiction. Scarcela and Camille
they make a detour. They take Bloom out for pizza,
and then they get to talking.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Sure, if I give you guys information, you can make
me a deal.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right, only the DA can do that.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
You can talk to him put in a word, we
can if you do what's right.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
So, uh, Cat, I.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Found you got anyway, A couple of sisters bounce him
too much.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I would like to see my mother, though she here
in Brooklyn is very often how it is, Let's go.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
She said, you want to see your mother now.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
And that the little things we were doing for him
were working in our favor.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
He started. Alan Bloome really came around. He admitted to
being the wheelman in the botched jewelry heist. He was
supposed to be that getaway driver, and he told Scarcella
the name of his accomplice. The shooter was a man
named David Ranta, another crack user and small time stick
up artist. Eventually he told Scarsella something really important. He
(07:51):
said he saw Ranta shoot the rabbi. Scarcella and his
partner track Ranta down, put him in a witness I know,
I believe it's him.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The one second from right.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
What number is he holding?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Number two? That was the key.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The detectives had a witness who claimed to see David
Ranta commit the murder. Still, a confession would be useful,
and of course getting confessions is Louis Garcella's superpower. Luckily,
he and Ranta find themselves alone in central book.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
You're in Vitty.
Speaker 9 (08:30):
You're going to jail.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
Anything you say now can only help you out. You're
the wrong guy here, Driep, You're nothing.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Don't call me you're nothing. Man. Look you're Italian.
Speaker 7 (08:40):
I'm Italian.
Speaker 6 (08:41):
I was born right across the street from where you lived.
I know what's happened to Bensoners because it creeps like
you be a.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Man about it. You won't be a nothing, all right?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
All right, now pause for a second. He didn't say
he shot the rabbi. He said, according to Scarcella, at
least I was there. Seems innocent enough. It's not, though.
What it means is that he's guilty of felay murder.
(09:14):
It's very useful for cops to have this one in
their back pocket. And a felony murder situation, you might
commit a robbery, but if someone gets murdered in the process,
that's on you as well. Even if you personally didn't
shoot the guy, you're guilty.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So back to forty year old Scarcella in Top Cops
way back in nineteen ninety two, wrapping things up for
the television audience.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
A lot of people don't think detectives try and establish
relationships with people were investigating, but it's.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Part of the job.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
All we were trying to do was to convince the
witnesses that it was in their best interest to tell
the truth.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Now to this is a real product of its era.
I mean, the acting is awful, the recreations, let's just
say they're hoky, and the sets are just cheap, flimsy.
The cops are the good guys, chasing down people they
call street MutS, and every case is resolved in time
for a serial commercial. The thing is, though, when it
(10:22):
comes to Louis Scarcella's career, Top Cops looked at the
moment like a career topper for this first grade detective.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Not the way it worked out. Here's version two of
the same events.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
On a cold gray morning in Williamsburg, Hassidic Jews converged
on the main synagogue of congregation.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You have to have leed of Satmorrow.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Thousands came to pay their last respects to ride By
High School Wurzburger.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
As Scarcela noted earlier in the episode, the murder of
Rabbi Hschool Wertzbeger was a huge deal. Among other things,
religious Jews are a crucial voting block in Brooklyn, the DA.
If you don't recall, it's an elected office.
Speaker 10 (11:13):
He was just on the wrong place, on the wrong time,
and it became a casualty of the jungle of the
city of New York.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That made defending David Ranta an unpopular job.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
I get a call one morning, I'm in the office.
It's a hot August day, mister Brown with a mykahomicide.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
This is Michael Baum. He was a defense attorney at
the time, and he sometimes got assigned cases for defendants
who couldn't afford lawyers.
Speaker 7 (11:46):
And she said, well, it's the David Rant the cases
he's tried to kill in the rabbi, and I said, sure,
I'll take the case. She says, you don't have to
if you don't want to. In fact, we've gone down
the list. We've already asked seven or eight lawyers. They've
all turned it down. I'll take the case. I thought
it was great, it was exciting, it was a great case,
but it was sort of like walking into the lions.
(12:06):
Then I walked into court to meet with him. I'm
immediately surrounded by reporters. I had done a few high
publicity cases before, but nothing like this. I met David
and the first thing he said to me was, Michael,
I had nothing to do with this case. I had
nothing to do with this case. I may be a
nice guy, which I hate that reputation.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I have no heart.
Speaker 7 (12:29):
I am absolutely heartless and I am absolutely ruthless. And
never let my nice guy persona fool you, because that's
when DA's get in trouble, and that's when cops get
in trouble. I'm a street wise kid from benson Hurst
and no one is going to fool me, and David
was not going to fool me either. The more I
(12:51):
learned about the case, the more I believed he was innocent.
I was just convinced David was not the guy they're
looking for. David just didn't have the wherewithal to commit
a quarter of a million dollar Jwelry, Robbie. It just
wasn't him. Where was he going to get this information?
It just wasn't like David.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Growing up in Bensonhurst, Michael Baum was familiar with guys.
Speaker 7 (13:14):
Like David Ranta. David, you know, lived my mother's building.
He grew up in Bensonhurst. He was like the kids
I know. He could have been me. I mean I
knew kids like him growing up. And David had a record.
He'd been arrested a few times before, but nothing bad,
and there was no violence in his history. There were
probably some issues with drugs that he had, but nothing
like this. And I never, for a minute believed that
(13:36):
David had anything to do with this. But that belief
wasn't worth much on paper. I will tell you on paper,
that case was as strong as can be. They had
an accomplished named Alan Bloom, who claimed that he knew
that David had set this up, that he had driven
David to the crime scene and he had watched as
(13:57):
David tried to rob this jewelry Karia, who then got away,
and then David ran up to the rabbi and shot him.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
In his car.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
There were three kids from the neighborhood who claimed that
they had seen somebody they identified as David sitting in
a car in the area and at the scene of
the crime right before the shooting, and it was a
confession that they alleged David to me. David is alleged
to have signed a confession written out by Luce Garsella.
(14:28):
What more do you need? This case has guilt written
all over. It just was as solid as you can imagine.
The case was garbage. The case was garbage.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
The problems begin with David Ranta's alleged accomplice, Alan Bloom,
the witness Garcela learned about in the bar.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
Alan Bloom was willing to testify for the prosecution had
five pending indictments against him for robbing little old ladies.
He was a terrible, terrible dame drug at it and
would have said and done anything. Alan Bloom was facing
one hundred years in jail on his five indictments, signed
a cooperation agreement where he was to get three to
(15:11):
nine years in jail if.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
He testified for the prosecution. So let's note what just happened. Bloom,
a stick up man with a long list of charges,
is facing a century in prison. District attorney has a
deal he could do as little as three years. Hey,
if I'm Alan Bloom, I say, mister district attorney, whatever
(15:36):
you need me to do. As for the kids who
saw Ranta in the area.
Speaker 7 (15:42):
The three kids who supposedly identified David at a lineup,
who identified David in the neighborhood, all gave a description
of the person they saw, none of which matched David.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
None of which matched David.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And what about that signed confession.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
David told me that when he was in Central booking,
he has to make a phone call, and Scarcela said, sure,
we'll give that. To make a phone call, just sign
here on this Manila envelope that he gave them, and
David signed his name. He said it was a blank Endvoope,
he just asked me to saw man named to make
a phone call. We get the court and suddenly there's
a confession written in Scarcela's handwriting above and below the signature.
(16:22):
They said that was blank. I never signed that. I
never said that.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Now, the people who will eventually review this case. Don't
believe that David Ranta actually signed a blank Manila envelope.
He'd been in and out of jail a lot, he
knew how the system worked. Plus he'd sign that Manila
envelope in several places. Still, the confession wasn't really a confession.
(16:47):
And does someone cough it up? Because our cop challenges
his manhood? Remember Scarcella's ploy was to say to Ranta,
be a man, be a man? Does that really lead
to confession? To bound the case against Rant? That was
suddenly looking vulnerable, and the defense had some evidence of
(17:07):
its own.
Speaker 7 (17:08):
We had Iron Weinberger, who was the jewelry carrier, who
testified that David was not the guy who tried to rob.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Them, and there had been another suspect.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
There must have been fifty names or more anonymous hips,
but there was one name that popped up, the name
of Joseph Asten. There was an anonymous caller that said,
you know the guy you're looking for is Joseph Asten.
Speaker 9 (17:37):
Equip the deck, does Wilson, Okay, I'm calling as by Workburger.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
Is the person you're looking for? Your name is Joseph
c Im. You know this, just check it out.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Thank you your name please.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I'm sorry, All of which raised a question, how did
David rant To become the prime suspect in the first place.
Speaker 7 (18:03):
Alan Blue knows Ranta well. He knows him from the neighborhood.
They were used to do drugs together.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
As the trial date approach, Michael Baum caught a break.
Remember those takeouts, Scarcela described in Top Cops.
Speaker 7 (18:16):
We had a tip that they were taking Alan Bloom
out of jail. My investigator goes and it parks herself
in front of Alan Bloom's house and sure enough, first
day out. Within an hour, scarcell and Camille come driving up.
Alan blooms in the car. They all get out of
the car. He's not handcuffed. He goes into his mother's house,
has breakfast or whatever he's doing there, comes out an
(18:38):
arrowway and they're sitting in the car waiting for him.
She continues to follow him. They drive to Alan Bloom's
old apartment on Avenue L in Brooklyn, and again they
all get out of the car, Scarcelle waiting downstairs. Alan
goes up to his home where his girlfriend resides. They're
smoking crack and then he comes down and they take
him back to jail. They were getting these orders to
(19:00):
take Alan Bloom out for investigatory purposes. His testimony was
born and paid for. He would have said anything they
wanted to say. He's got the greatest deal in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Scarcela later acknowledged that he and his partner took Bloom
out of jail twenty one times. Bloom was pretty good company.
But was that why he testified against David Ranta or
was it Alan Bloom's sweetheart deal offered by the DA
instead of one hundred years. Remember he's looking at as
(19:32):
little as three. But for Baum, it was Louis Scarcella
who was pulling all the strings. This could not have
happened without Scarcewa doing all this. He put the case together,
he arranged for all the witnesses, He got all the witnesses.
Speaker 7 (19:48):
This was not good investigatory techniques. This was perjury.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (19:52):
I took him out, took the cuffs off of him,
took him to see his girlfriend, took him to his
mother's house, took him to eat pizza.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
We asked Scarcela about these takeouts, and he says they
were pretty common at the time. Everyone knew about them,
including the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
As he put it, a happy witness is a good witness.
Maybe taking a guy out of jail and taking him
to his girlfriend is breaking the rules, But it didn't
occur to me because it just I was caught up
in the moment, and you have to put your trust
(20:30):
in someone, and I put my trust into Alan Loom
And I believed every word he said, and I'll go
to my grave believe in every word he.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Said, Worth noting that these are the same words Scarcela
used when endorsing Teresa Gomez's accounts. Meanwhile, the DA was
pushing hard for a conviction. The city was living in
fear of murders like Rabbi Wurtzburgers twenty two hundred murders
in New York City the year that the Rabbi was killed.
Speaker 7 (21:07):
I'm going to stand up in front of a jury
in Brooklyn in nineteen ninety one, and I'm going to
tell them that this case was set up by Luce Garcela.
Forget about that he's a decorated detective, renowned detective. I'm
going to tell them that this detective set up this case,
that this detective arranged to arrest an innocent man.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And you know something, the more I thought about it,
the more bizarre it sounded.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
Who would believe this? I knew we were getting close
to conviction, and it's devastating. It's just devastating.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
You know. I know where we're going.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
I'm trying to keep David as positive as possible, but
I know where the jury is going with that. And
David was a venture sentenced to thirty seven and a
half years to five.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The jury actually acquitted Rant of murder. Garcela might believe everything,
Alan Bloom said. Jurors didn't. If they found Ranta guilty
of felony murder, remember those three little words. I was there.
He hugged me leaving the court room.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
They said, Michael, please don't forget about me. Please don't
forget about me. I remember those words this day. Don't
forget about me. As if I ever could. You know
case was done. I followed my notice of appo. It
was as discouraging as you could imagine. It was grim.
(22:36):
And then I got a phone call. A few days
after the verdict. I get a call from a woman
who says to me, mister Bow, he said, man who.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Tried to Dave Rant. The case. Yes, he says, your
coin is innocent. He said, how do you know, because
my husband is the murderer.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Quick has he heard that bomb? Thought of one name,
Joseph Aston, the same name provided by the anonymous tipster
all those years ago.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
And I said, let me drive over to the Aston's address.
And I drive over and I knock on the door.
The young girl comes to the door, and I said, Hi,
my name is Michael Baum. I wonder if I could
talk to you. She looked around to see if anybody was,
you know, following me. She stuck my hand, led me in.
She took me up to her apartment. She lived above
(23:32):
a store, and finally she said to me, I'm the
woman how called. And she says, my husband, Joseph was
the one who killed a rabbi. And I said, well,
you know, why don't you come Why didn't you come forward?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Why didn't why did you wait? What was the problem?
Speaker 7 (23:48):
She says, I knew your client, David Rant was innocent,
and I didn't want to come forward because I'm thinking
he's going to get acquitted and then I don't have
to reveal to the world that my husband was the murderer,
that my husband murdered around by, she said, but after
he was convicted, I felt bad.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
I was afraid to give you my name. Her name
was Teresa Aston, and the problem was that her husband, Joseph,
had died after confessing the murder to his wife and Teresa,
she was still afraid to testify.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
When Rant's appeals were exhausted, I went back to Teresa
and I said, Teresa, I need your help. And I
knew she was religious, and I said, your husband's soul
will never rest knowing that an innocent man is in
jail for something that he did. Phuease help me, and
she agreed to help. She finally agreed to sign an affidavit.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Fate helped Teresa got arrested. Bomb offered legal help. Teresa
said she testified, but it didn't matter. The judge thought
she was a liar. Years passed, then decades David Rant
had remained in prison.
Speaker 7 (25:04):
It was a matter of justice, and I could not
let it rest. I just would not let it rest.
If there's any hope, any chance, I'm going to fight.
David wrote to me letters over the years, begging me
for help, sending me Christmas cards every year, asking about
my kids. It was almost heartbreaking, quite frankly. I would
love getting letters from him and hearing from him, but
(25:28):
it was very difficult, very emotional, quite frankly. And then
I got another call. It was twenty eleven. It was
in the spring, and I got a call. Mister Baum,
my name is Max Leebman. Do you remember me? Do
I remember you? It's only been twenty years. Yes, I
remember you. You were one of the thirteen year old
(25:49):
kids that testified at the Ranta case. He says he'd
been thinking about this case for twenty years. He said
it had always been on his mind, that had always
bothered him.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
He said the.
Speaker 7 (26:00):
Cops called him in and he went into that lineup.
He said he was scared to death. He comes from
a Laura abiding family. The community was very laurabiding. They
believed in what the police did and what the police said.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
He said.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
They took him into the lineup and told him pick
the guy with the big nose. He said, I looked
at the lineup, your client was obviously the one with
the big nose, and I picked out David Ranta. He says,
I never saw him before. I had no idea who
he was. The cop told me who to pick out.
I picked him out.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Here's Max Lieberman speaking on CNN years later.
Speaker 12 (26:32):
As I was walking in the room to the lineup,
he basically told me that I should pick up the
guy with the biggest notes. I was too young back
then to realize that this was a setup. As I
grew older and saw more and more of this wrongful convictions,
it really bothered me. I mean, it's something that bothered
me very much until two years ago. I decided I
(26:55):
have to get it off my chest. I have to
tell the authorities what happened.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Then.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Max Lieberman didn't name Scarcela as the cop who told
him who to pick thar Scarcella was in charge of
the lineup in any case. At the time, for Michael Baum,
it felt like too little, too late.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I said, what the hell am I supposed to do
with this information?
Speaker 7 (27:17):
Now? Who's going to give a damn? Twenty years after
the fact, Ranta was convicted in nineteen ninety one. This
is now twenty eleven, but by an incredible coincidence, a
few months later. This was in the December of two
thousand and eleven, Hines, the DA comes to my office.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Remember when the Rabbi's murder case occurred. Charles Hines had
just been elected Brooklyn District Attorney, that's for the first time,
and he'd made prosecuting David Ranta a lynchpin of his
early career. His office had fought every Ran to appeal.
But twenty years later, it's an election year and Hines
(27:57):
has a new thought.
Speaker 7 (28:00):
Starting this new unit, the Conviction Integrity Unit, to look
at old cases, to look at cases where people have
been convicted who may very well been innocent. And does
anybody here know of any case where you have an
innocent coin in jail? Then I raised my hand, mister Hines,
I have a case I'd like to talk.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
To you about after the break. A third point of view.
Speaker 13 (28:32):
I always somehow knew I wanted to be a lawyer.
I had a couple lawyers in my family, but honestly
and truly was influenced heavily by law and order.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
I just couldn't stop watching the TV show.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
This is Taylor Coss. He went from watching a prosecutor
on TV to being a prosecutor in the Brooklyn District
Attorney's Office.
Speaker 13 (28:53):
I grew up in Brooklyn, so I thought working for
the Brooklyn DA's office was the appropriate office to be in,
get back to the community where up and stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
And then from there.
Speaker 13 (29:03):
During the time I was there was when the Conviction
Integraty Unit was formed.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
That's the unit Hinz form to look at questionable convictions.
Speaker 13 (29:11):
I just thought it was really interesting. It was something different.
I had been in the office for a decade already,
and I thought, this is a way perhaps to have
a real impact. The idea and the concept that individuals
wrongfully convicted had never crossed my mind up until that point.
You become programmed to believe that all of these convictions
are legitimate, you know, you don't even.
Speaker 5 (29:31):
Question them at all.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
So COS joined the new unit as its first staff attorney.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
I got there on day one. Rant was the president
waiting for me.
Speaker 13 (29:40):
I had, you know, I had one time had the
beautiful corner office with the windows and it was nice
and lovely.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
It was awesome.
Speaker 13 (29:46):
Then, you know, the Conviction Integrity Unit didn't have anything.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
There was no bureau, there were no offices anything.
Speaker 13 (29:52):
So I was given a tiny office in the Appeals
unit that was literally like a box. It was no windows,
maybe six square It felt like it was a maybe
eight square feet and just stacked from top to bottom
with cardboard boxes of cases.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
It was terrible.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
I mean Ranta itself, I think was thirteen boxes.
Speaker 13 (30:11):
And I just was completely and totally intimidated by the mountain,
you know, by the mountains of files and everything. And
I just dove headfirst into it, you know, and I
was like, this is amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Taylor Coss immediately thought something about the Ranta case looked off.
Speaker 13 (30:30):
If you look at Randa on paper, on paper, not
knowing anything else, no color, commentary, nothing else on paper,
you say strong case. And all you do is you
start with the first person, the jeweler, right, he was
the robbery victim. He was right there, maybe what five
ten feet closer at points, and you talk to him
and he says, you know, with emphasis, not Randa. Never Ranta.
(30:54):
You know, was never Randa, and in fact doesn't really
look like Randa. Then you say to yourself, well, this
is a problem, alm right.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Piece by piece, Taylor Coss went through the file, and
as he did, troubling facts started to accumulate. He started
to wonder about other suspects, like Joe Aston.
Speaker 13 (31:16):
If you look at the DD fives on the case, right,
you know, the detective's reports In all of those DD fives,
you'll never find the name David Ranta. You will find
Joe Aston's name. A few times it was clear that
Aston was a real suspect, and then, of course, at
the end of April, Aston dies in an untimely death.
Teresa Aston claims that her now deceased husband, Joseph Austen,
(31:42):
confessed to her that he did this crime. So my
gut feeling was this, I believe he was the primary
suspect at that time. I believe that Scarcela thought that
he did it, and he was the only one that
they had any eyes on, And I think he knew
that he would never be able to close the case
on Aston as it stood, and for him then that's
(32:02):
an abject.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Failure, right, So what does he have to do? Has
to close the case somehow.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
So Dax, I'm going to tell you this explanation by
Coss seems a little Coca Maimi. Coss says, Detective Scarcella
can't close the case if the purpose did which I
don't understand. Of course, you can close a case if
the purpose did. So. Cause's theory is that because the
guy's dead, Sarcella can't get the headlines that he really
(32:32):
yearns for, and rather than go with the dead guy,
he jin's up a case against someone else. I don't
know about that anyhow.
Speaker 13 (32:42):
Heavy action on this case, tremendous political and environmental pressure
to solve this case, and all of a sudden, now
Alan Bloom, career criminal, Alan Bloom comes forward and now says,
I got it.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
I got your guy.
Speaker 13 (32:54):
It's David ran It's it's you know, I got the guy.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
That's what he says.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And then one day, Costs made a discard that convinced
him of Ranta's innocence and also convinced him that nefarious
forces were'd work inside his own office. Now this story,
if you didn't think it was already, gets crazy.
Speaker 13 (33:17):
So I was wandering alone and I walked into what
I didn't even know existed at the time, which was
a separate appeals fileroom. I didn't even know the thing existed.
I would never an appeals and never handle appeals, so
I had no idea. So I just started wandering around
in the appeals fileroom, and out of the corner of
my eye, I.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
See the name Rantha. I'm like, what the heck is this?
Speaker 13 (33:35):
And there's a box that says Ranta kind of poking
out from the back, So I immediately grab it and
I go back to my office and there's a bunch
of things in there, and one of the things in
there is an audio tape, and I'm like, what the
heck's this audio tape? I play it and it's clearly
Ranta in a telephone call while he was incarcerated, being recorded.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
So this is the voice of David Ranta from nineteen
ninety one.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Everything. Maybe God, I was writing to hear from you, Dave.
Speaker 13 (34:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Well, I had to.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Let no profile and everything because some way they were
doing it, maybe investigating, and I couldn't fathom what was
going on.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
I really couldn't at first.
Speaker 13 (34:14):
This is way way, way before corrections, was taping every call.
So really no circumstances that I could think of that
the call should have been taped legitimately. But it was
interesting because he was claiming he was innocent in the
call and asking this individual for help.
Speaker 14 (34:34):
She's a witnessed against me, she's a witness against you.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
She knows who did it, Yeah, she knows who took
him in it.
Speaker 13 (34:41):
Right, Brandon doesn't know he's being recorded has no reason
to think he's being recorded, and all he does is
protest is innocence. And yet here's the DA's office freaking
recording the guy, which is just absurd.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
You weren't allowed to do that.
Speaker 13 (34:55):
He's represented by a council, so you have no You're
not allowed to talk to him. You're not allowed to
be a part of any kind versation with him. Not
allowed to do this.
Speaker 5 (35:01):
You don't have a warrant, you don't have any order
to do this.
Speaker 13 (35:04):
You're illegally recording, and you certainly never turned it over
when it had been interesting, by the way, for the
jury to know then in a recorded a conversation when
nobody knew he was listening that Randa was in fact
asserting his innocence.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Just to be clear, Taylor cost is saying that his office,
the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, committed a crime in order
to convict an innocent man. It's a twist right out
of law and order. Cos wanted to know where the
tape came from. He began by sitting down with Ranta
and playing him the tape.
Speaker 14 (35:44):
Ranta was he was obviously thrown He was like, what
is this? Why am I being recorded, who is this?
I don't know what this is. I don't know, I
don't remember. I said, you gotta know what this is.
Who are you talking to?
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Who's talking?
Speaker 14 (35:56):
Who's recording you? Dude? Who is this? So after like
an hour and a half, all he could come up
with was that he believed that it was a person
named Monty from the car wash? What car wash? Oh
went over by this area. I don't remember which one.
You don't remember the guy? You don't know him? Why
would he be calling?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Oh?
Speaker 14 (36:14):
He was you know, he was involved in everything. He
was a friend everybody. I thought he could help. Blah
blah blah blah. What locate you know? So he had
no only those is Manty from the car wash.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
So now Taylor Kass, who was short and a little roundish,
who sometimes wears what looks like a backpack, goes on
the hunt like a real, you know, detective out there
law and order style.
Speaker 14 (36:35):
It's like, I'm a detective, you know. And by the way,
I kind of I kind of was into it, you know,
like when you're an Ada, You're always like I want
to be a detective. Yeah, I'm like detectives literally pounding
the payment and we actually go into a car wash
where one of the guys is like, I think, I think,
I remember when I bought the place that there was
a guy named Monty. He used to hang out here,
but I'm not sure. Call the owner. The owner of
(36:57):
the car washes down in Florida. Owner of the car
rush gets on the phone with us. The guy says,
you know what, that sounds vaguely familiar. I don't know.
Speaker 13 (37:04):
Go to the.
Speaker 14 (37:04):
Funeral parlor around the corner. Around the corner. They were
here at the time, they may know something. So we
go around the corner.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
This turns into one of those long shaggy dog stories,
but Daxx I'm into.
Speaker 14 (37:17):
It, and we buzz the funeral parlor. Nobody's there, but
the owner says we'll be there. He comes over fifteen
minutes later. Flavorite take friend and the owner of the
fucking funeral parlor is like, Oh, that's my brother in law.
What gives us the name of his guy? He's a
professional fucking confidential informant for the FEDS, for all atf
(37:40):
for all these places. Me and Ronny can find the guy.
Takes me a while, but he finally talks to me
and tells me that he was specifically asked to do
it by someone at the DA's office and tells me
a story. Whoever would pay better he would work with,
and at the time he was working with the narcotics guys,
and the narcotics guys mentioned the name Random, and Monty
(38:00):
knew him from around the neighborhood, and so he says, Oh,
I know that's I know that fucking guy. I know
that fucking guy.
Speaker 9 (38:06):
Right.
Speaker 14 (38:06):
They said, what what do you mean you know that guy?
You fucking know that guy? Hold on, they say, They
pick him up, They walk him over to an Ada's office.
They set him in a chair and the Ada says, oh,
you know you know David Randam's like, yeah, of course
I'm not doing so he's like, so, what are you
gonna fucking do about it? And the guy says, what
do you mean about it?
Speaker 7 (38:26):
He's like, what do you say?
Speaker 14 (38:26):
Oh, you're going to record a conversation for him. Oh,
that's so nice of you. And he's like, uh, what
do you mean is that guy you're gonna record if
he calls you from If he calls you, oh, he
just called me from Jolie. Oh, if he calls you again,
you're going to record it. Did the ADA get to
the detectives to give him all the recording equipment they
set up, set it up on his phone, and they
basically tell him, get him to say anything he can
(38:46):
about doing it, and to illegally record him while he's
in jail. So I say, who was it? Who's the idea?
He has no idea. He describes where the office was,
how he got there specifically.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah, so cass is on the trail now like a bloodhound,
like a real detective. He drew up a photo array
and asked Monty to identify who asked him to make
the recording. Monty pointed to a picture of the Deputy
District attorney at the time.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
A big shot in the office.
Speaker 14 (39:18):
It was clear what he had done. You know that
that should have gotten this barred probably at the time.
He's just fucking outrageous behavior.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Finally, after months of work, Taylor Coss brought all the
evidence of David Rance's wrongful conviction to his bosses, and
the result was something extraordinary. Here's Michael Baum again. He
wasn't David Rance's lawyer anymore, but he still followed the
case closely.
Speaker 7 (39:46):
One morning in March I'm right on the train and
I open up to New York Times. I'm going to work,
and they're in the front page. There's a story about
David Ranta.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
He's going to be and I said, and I cried.
Speaker 8 (40:07):
Talks of the District Attorney charge and hiens by John
o'bara for the people. And we have concluded, at for
rather extensive investigation by the unit that is a conviction
integrity unit of the District Attorney's office, that the evidence
no longer establishes the defendants guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 15 (40:24):
Okay, thank you. It's clear that the effects of this
case have been devastating. To say that I'm sorry for
what you have endured would be an understatement and grossly inadequate,
but I say it to you anyway. Based on the
record made here today, it's okay. The defendant's motion to
vacate the judgment of conviction is granted. Sir, you are
(40:49):
free to go.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
As I said from the and I had nothing to
do with this case.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
And what did Louis Scarcella have to say that day?
Speaker 9 (41:07):
Detective Scarcella retired. How are you, sir? What do you
think about this release of Ranta?
Speaker 4 (41:14):
I really can't talk about it, but well, what I
will say is this, I'm certainly not running from you.
Speaker 6 (41:21):
I stand by the confession. I stand by the case.
Speaker 9 (41:25):
Did you coach witnesses? No, sir, did you ever instruct
the thirteen year old witness to pick out the guy
with the big nose? I don't never, No, sir, No, sir,
didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Noson. After that everything changed. Francis Robless, that's Frenchie, did
her stories about Teresa Gomez and others. Dozens of Scarcella's
old cases were reopened, a new district attorney was elected
on a platform of reform, and Louis Scarcella became the
most notorious cop in New York. Then, one day, about
(42:02):
a year after the conviction was overturned, Michael Baum ran
into Louis Scarcella in a Brooklyn courthouse.
Speaker 7 (42:09):
He was sitting on the bench, well dressed, look good.
He was Elbatara and we chit chatted, and I said, Louis,
you know, I used to think the devil was somebody
with horns and a tail. And I says, you know what, Louis,
the devil was smart and looking good and dresses well
and articulate. Not the guy in the in the red suit,
you know with the tail and the pitchfork.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yes, Louis, you wore the devil.
Speaker 11 (42:33):
Oh yeah, I'm the devil and disgraced devil. Yeah yeah,
Well what can I tell you?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer
and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Sound designed for today's
episode by Bianca Salinas, Dax Devlin Ross and Me. Steve
Fishman are your hosts. The Burden is a production of
Orbit Media. Thank You, See You next time. Season two
(43:12):
of The Burden Empire on Blood will be available everywhere
you get your podcasts on August seventh. All episodes will
be available early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus
content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse, our subscription
channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety nine a month.
Hi. Steve Fishman here, creator of The Burden as well
as the number one true crime podcast, My Friend The
Serial Killer. For those of you who liked The Burden,
I have good news. Season two starts August seventh. It's
a series called The Burden Empire on Blood and it's
the director's cut of the true crime classic Empire on Blood,
(00:22):
which reached number one on the charts when it debuted
half a dozen years ago. Then the fat cat funders
abandon it. I wrangled it back and now I'm thrilled
to share this story of a man who fought the
law for two decades, fought against the Bronx's top homicide
prosecutor and a detective sometimes known as the Louis Scarcela
(00:44):
of the Bronx. It's all coming to you August seventh,
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Hey Burden fans, I'm Dax Devlin and I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Welcome to another bonus episode of The Burden. As always,
would love to hear your thoughts about the series the bonuses.
If you feel like sharing, call us at eight three
three eight Burden.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Today, we're diving into a case that changed everything for
Louis Scarcela at least, and for the members of the
jail house law firm as well though, and maybe even
for Brooklyn Criminal Justice. This is the first of twenty
one Scarcella cases to be overturned. You could say it
opened the floodgates.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And I'll tell you it's a really good episode. And
here's the reason. The information is new, the stakes are high,
and the people involved care. Plus, we got a hold
of some really unusual secret tape. You'll hear that towards
the end of the episode. It raises a question that's
hung over the series. What did the district attorney do
(01:59):
think You're going to be surprised by the answer.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
In this episode, we offer three points of view on
the same case. We start with Louise, which inevitably means
we start with a dead body. In this case, it's
that of a revered Brooklyn rabbi.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
This was the murder of the century, a rabbi getting
killed in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
This is the case that made Louis famous, TV famous.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
At least it's nineteen ninety one. There's something like fifty
detectives assigned to this case, and they come up with
bubkiss nothing. Enter Louis and his partner.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
I was born in Brooklyn, got married in Brooklyn, and
I raised my kids here. I'm Italian, proud of it.
I'm proud of my neighborhood. I don't like seeing it
get missed around.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
This is audio from an early nineties nationally syndicated TV
show called Cops. It broadcasts great detective work from around
the country. The guy talking guys is none other than
Louis Scarcella himself. He's on the show to talk about
the David Ranta case, the case that made him fact.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Two small time stick up men, guys we call street monts.
It shows in this particular day for the biggest score
of their lives.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
I should look for pocket space, shut up and do
what I tell y'all.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
As actors recreate the scenes, Scarcella narrates the action.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
The situation here involved the Diamond and Jewelry company courier.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, he took a quarter of a
million dollars worth of golden diamonds in a cardboard box
and flew.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
To Santo Domingo for processing. On screen, we see the
courier leave the building and head towards his car. The
two stickup men are waiting for him. The courier gets
in his car and one of the stickup men puts
a gun to the window. The car now, but the
courier manages to peel off. When the stickup man runs
(04:06):
back to the street after the car, his partner is
nowhere to be found in the car. He needs a
getaway car.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Rabbi Haskell Wurtzburger, an Auschwitz survivor whose family had perished
in the concentration camps, was going to school to open
it for morning prayers.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
The stickup man approaches the Rabbi and his part.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
He shoots him, steals the car, and takes off. The
Rabbi lies bleeding in the street.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Two days later, Rabbi Wurzburger died, and the anger of
not only the Williamsburg Jewish community, but the entire city
of New York become a call with one voice to
find his killer.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Dozens of detectives that fan out across the city. They
come up with nothing, and then they call him the
big dogs, Scarcel and his partner Steve Camill.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Hey, luie, this guy must have been a crackhead.
Speaker 6 (05:04):
I mean the panic like this kill a guy for
his car, I know, but the jeweler. Sounds like a
job a pro would do, and nobody knows his way around.
Try a score like this without wheel Man.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, but a pro wouldn't shoot an innocent bystander.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Plus he was just playing crazy.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
By the way, this city's going not to make sense anymore.
You're on the northomal side.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Of the airk.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Eventually they catch a break. As Louis told us the story,
he was in a bar with his favorite cops and prosecutors,
having a good old time blowing off steam. His beeper
goes off. It's a cop calling with a tip a
stick up artist he knows fits the profile of the
guy they're looking for. This is a guy named Alan Bloom.
(05:48):
So scar Selling his partner rushed from the bar to
bring in Alan Bloom for questioning.
Speaker 7 (05:55):
Listen, like I was saying, we got this case this Rabbi,
I can't tell you what that is to.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Us, and from what I hear, you could use a
little l.
Speaker 8 (06:07):
The next day we arrange for a takeout order.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
This gave us a chance to talk some more and
to build up his trust.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
A takeout order that's what allows the detectives to take
a suspected criminal out of jail for official purposes.
Speaker 6 (06:23):
Where you guys taking me DA's office. I hear you
been a busy boy forties stick up some counting. Yeah,
I got some expensive habits.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Expensive habits he's referring to crack addiction. Scarcela and Camille
they make a detour. They take Bloom out for pizza,
and then they get to talking.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
Sure, if I give you guys information, you can make
me a deal.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right, only the DA can do that.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
You can talk to him put in a word, we
can if you do what's right.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
So, uh, Cat, I.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Found you got anyway, A couple of sisters bounce him
too much.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
I would like to see my mother, though she here
in Brooklyn is very often how it is, Let's go.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
She said, you want to see your mother now.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
And that the little things we were doing for him
were working in our favor.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
He started. Alan Bloome really came around. He admitted to
being the wheelman in the botched jewelry heist. He was
supposed to be that getaway driver, and he told Scarcella
the name of his accomplice. The shooter was a man
named David Ranta, another crack user and small time stick
up artist. Eventually he told Scarsella something really important. He
(07:51):
said he saw Ranta shoot the rabbi. Scarcella and his
partner track Ranta down, put him in a witness I know,
I believe it's him.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
The one second from right.
Speaker 6 (08:04):
What number is he holding?
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Number two? That was the key.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
The detectives had a witness who claimed to see David
Ranta commit the murder. Still, a confession would be useful,
and of course getting confessions is Louis Garcella's superpower. Luckily,
he and Ranta find themselves alone in central book.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
You're in Vitty.
Speaker 9 (08:30):
You're going to jail.
Speaker 6 (08:32):
Anything you say now can only help you out. You're
the wrong guy here, Driep, You're nothing.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Don't call me you're nothing. Man. Look you're Italian.
Speaker 7 (08:40):
I'm Italian.
Speaker 6 (08:41):
I was born right across the street from where you lived.
I know what's happened to Bensoners because it creeps like
you be a.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Man about it. You won't be a nothing, all right?
Speaker 2 (08:52):
All right, now pause for a second. He didn't say
he shot the rabbi. He said, according to Scarcella, at
least I was there. Seems innocent enough. It's not, though.
What it means is that he's guilty of felay murder.
(09:14):
It's very useful for cops to have this one in
their back pocket. And a felony murder situation, you might
commit a robbery, but if someone gets murdered in the process,
that's on you as well. Even if you personally didn't
shoot the guy, you're guilty.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
So back to forty year old Scarcella in Top Cops
way back in nineteen ninety two, wrapping things up for
the television audience.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
A lot of people don't think detectives try and establish
relationships with people were investigating, but it's.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Part of the job.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
All we were trying to do was to convince the
witnesses that it was in their best interest to tell
the truth.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Now to this is a real product of its era.
I mean, the acting is awful, the recreations, let's just
say they're hoky, and the sets are just cheap, flimsy.
The cops are the good guys, chasing down people they
call street MutS, and every case is resolved in time
for a serial commercial. The thing is, though, when it
(10:22):
comes to Louis Scarcella's career, Top Cops looked at the
moment like a career topper for this first grade detective.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Not the way it worked out. Here's version two of
the same events.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
On a cold gray morning in Williamsburg, Hassidic Jews converged
on the main synagogue of congregation.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You have to have leed of Satmorrow.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Thousands came to pay their last respects to ride By
High School Wurzburger.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
As Scarcela noted earlier in the episode, the murder of
Rabbi Hschool Wertzbeger was a huge deal. Among other things,
religious Jews are a crucial voting block in Brooklyn, the DA.
If you don't recall, it's an elected office.
Speaker 10 (11:13):
He was just on the wrong place, on the wrong time,
and it became a casualty of the jungle of the
city of New York.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
That made defending David Ranta an unpopular job.
Speaker 7 (11:30):
I get a call one morning, I'm in the office.
It's a hot August day, mister Brown with a mykahomicide.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
This is Michael Baum. He was a defense attorney at
the time, and he sometimes got assigned cases for defendants
who couldn't afford lawyers.
Speaker 7 (11:46):
And she said, well, it's the David Rant the cases
he's tried to kill in the rabbi, and I said, sure,
I'll take the case. She says, you don't have to
if you don't want to. In fact, we've gone down
the list. We've already asked seven or eight lawyers. They've
all turned it down. I'll take the case. I thought
it was great, it was exciting, it was a great case,
but it was sort of like walking into the lions.
(12:06):
Then I walked into court to meet with him. I'm
immediately surrounded by reporters. I had done a few high
publicity cases before, but nothing like this. I met David
and the first thing he said to me was, Michael,
I had nothing to do with this case. I had
nothing to do with this case. I may be a
nice guy, which I hate that reputation.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
I have no heart.
Speaker 7 (12:29):
I am absolutely heartless and I am absolutely ruthless. And
never let my nice guy persona fool you, because that's
when DA's get in trouble, and that's when cops get
in trouble. I'm a street wise kid from benson Hurst
and no one is going to fool me, and David
was not going to fool me either. The more I
(12:51):
learned about the case, the more I believed he was innocent.
I was just convinced David was not the guy they're
looking for. David just didn't have the wherewithal to commit
a quarter of a million dollar Jwelry, Robbie. It just
wasn't him. Where was he going to get this information?
It just wasn't like David.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Growing up in Bensonhurst, Michael Baum was familiar with guys.
Speaker 7 (13:14):
Like David Ranta. David, you know, lived my mother's building.
He grew up in Bensonhurst. He was like the kids
I know. He could have been me. I mean I
knew kids like him growing up. And David had a record.
He'd been arrested a few times before, but nothing bad,
and there was no violence in his history. There were
probably some issues with drugs that he had, but nothing
like this. And I never, for a minute believed that
(13:36):
David had anything to do with this. But that belief
wasn't worth much on paper. I will tell you on paper,
that case was as strong as can be. They had
an accomplished named Alan Bloom, who claimed that he knew
that David had set this up, that he had driven
David to the crime scene and he had watched as
(13:57):
David tried to rob this jewelry Karia, who then got away,
and then David ran up to the rabbi and shot him.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
In his car.
Speaker 7 (14:05):
There were three kids from the neighborhood who claimed that
they had seen somebody they identified as David sitting in
a car in the area and at the scene of
the crime right before the shooting, and it was a
confession that they alleged David to me. David is alleged
to have signed a confession written out by Luce Garsella.
(14:28):
What more do you need? This case has guilt written
all over. It just was as solid as you can imagine.
The case was garbage. The case was garbage.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
The problems begin with David Ranta's alleged accomplice, Alan Bloom,
the witness Garcela learned about in the bar.
Speaker 7 (14:51):
Alan Bloom was willing to testify for the prosecution had
five pending indictments against him for robbing little old ladies.
He was a terrible, terrible dame drug at it and
would have said and done anything. Alan Bloom was facing
one hundred years in jail on his five indictments, signed
a cooperation agreement where he was to get three to
(15:11):
nine years in jail if.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
He testified for the prosecution. So let's note what just happened. Bloom,
a stick up man with a long list of charges,
is facing a century in prison. District attorney has a
deal he could do as little as three years. Hey,
if I'm Alan Bloom, I say, mister district attorney, whatever
(15:36):
you need me to do. As for the kids who
saw Ranta in the area.
Speaker 7 (15:42):
The three kids who supposedly identified David at a lineup,
who identified David in the neighborhood, all gave a description
of the person they saw, none of which matched David.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
None of which matched David.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And what about that signed confession.
Speaker 7 (15:58):
David told me that when he was in Central booking,
he has to make a phone call, and Scarcela said, sure,
we'll give that. To make a phone call, just sign
here on this Manila envelope that he gave them, and
David signed his name. He said it was a blank Endvoope,
he just asked me to saw man named to make
a phone call. We get the court and suddenly there's
a confession written in Scarcela's handwriting above and below the signature.
(16:22):
They said that was blank. I never signed that. I
never said that.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Now, the people who will eventually review this case. Don't
believe that David Ranta actually signed a blank Manila envelope.
He'd been in and out of jail a lot, he
knew how the system worked. Plus he'd sign that Manila
envelope in several places. Still, the confession wasn't really a confession.
(16:47):
And does someone cough it up? Because our cop challenges
his manhood? Remember Scarcella's ploy was to say to Ranta,
be a man, be a man? Does that really lead
to confession? To bound the case against Rant? That was
suddenly looking vulnerable, and the defense had some evidence of
(17:07):
its own.
Speaker 7 (17:08):
We had Iron Weinberger, who was the jewelry carrier, who
testified that David was not the guy who tried to rob.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Them, and there had been another suspect.
Speaker 7 (17:19):
There must have been fifty names or more anonymous hips,
but there was one name that popped up, the name
of Joseph Asten. There was an anonymous caller that said,
you know the guy you're looking for is Joseph Asten.
Speaker 9 (17:37):
Equip the deck, does Wilson, Okay, I'm calling as by Workburger.
Speaker 8 (17:43):
Is the person you're looking for? Your name is Joseph
c Im. You know this, just check it out.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Thank you your name please.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I'm sorry, All of which raised a question, how did
David rant To become the prime suspect in the first place.
Speaker 7 (18:03):
Alan Blue knows Ranta well. He knows him from the neighborhood.
They were used to do drugs together.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
As the trial date approach, Michael Baum caught a break.
Remember those takeouts, Scarcela described in Top Cops.
Speaker 7 (18:16):
We had a tip that they were taking Alan Bloom
out of jail. My investigator goes and it parks herself
in front of Alan Bloom's house and sure enough, first
day out. Within an hour, scarcell and Camille come driving up.
Alan blooms in the car. They all get out of
the car. He's not handcuffed. He goes into his mother's house,
has breakfast or whatever he's doing there, comes out an
(18:38):
arrowway and they're sitting in the car waiting for him.
She continues to follow him. They drive to Alan Bloom's
old apartment on Avenue L in Brooklyn, and again they
all get out of the car, Scarcelle waiting downstairs. Alan
goes up to his home where his girlfriend resides. They're
smoking crack and then he comes down and they take
him back to jail. They were getting these orders to
(19:00):
take Alan Bloom out for investigatory purposes. His testimony was
born and paid for. He would have said anything they
wanted to say. He's got the greatest deal in the world.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Scarcela later acknowledged that he and his partner took Bloom
out of jail twenty one times. Bloom was pretty good company.
But was that why he testified against David Ranta or
was it Alan Bloom's sweetheart deal offered by the DA
instead of one hundred years. Remember he's looking at as
(19:32):
little as three. But for Baum, it was Louis Scarcella
who was pulling all the strings. This could not have
happened without Scarcewa doing all this. He put the case together,
he arranged for all the witnesses, He got all the witnesses.
Speaker 7 (19:48):
This was not good investigatory techniques. This was perjury.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (19:52):
I took him out, took the cuffs off of him,
took him to see his girlfriend, took him to his
mother's house, took him to eat pizza.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
We asked Scarcela about these takeouts, and he says they
were pretty common at the time. Everyone knew about them,
including the District Attorney's office.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
As he put it, a happy witness is a good witness.
Maybe taking a guy out of jail and taking him
to his girlfriend is breaking the rules, But it didn't
occur to me because it just I was caught up
in the moment, and you have to put your trust
(20:30):
in someone, and I put my trust into Alan Loom
And I believed every word he said, and I'll go
to my grave believe in every word he.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Said, Worth noting that these are the same words Scarcela
used when endorsing Teresa Gomez's accounts. Meanwhile, the DA was
pushing hard for a conviction. The city was living in
fear of murders like Rabbi Wurtzburgers twenty two hundred murders
in New York City the year that the Rabbi was killed.
Speaker 7 (21:07):
I'm going to stand up in front of a jury
in Brooklyn in nineteen ninety one, and I'm going to
tell them that this case was set up by Luce Garcela.
Forget about that he's a decorated detective, renowned detective. I'm
going to tell them that this detective set up this case,
that this detective arranged to arrest an innocent man.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And you know something, the more I thought about it,
the more bizarre it sounded.
Speaker 7 (21:32):
Who would believe this? I knew we were getting close
to conviction, and it's devastating. It's just devastating.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
You know. I know where we're going.
Speaker 7 (21:41):
I'm trying to keep David as positive as possible, but
I know where the jury is going with that. And
David was a venture sentenced to thirty seven and a
half years to five.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
The jury actually acquitted Rant of murder. Garcela might believe everything,
Alan Bloom said. Jurors didn't. If they found Ranta guilty
of felony murder, remember those three little words. I was there.
He hugged me leaving the court room.
Speaker 7 (22:11):
They said, Michael, please don't forget about me. Please don't
forget about me. I remember those words this day. Don't
forget about me. As if I ever could. You know
case was done. I followed my notice of appo. It
was as discouraging as you could imagine. It was grim.
(22:36):
And then I got a phone call. A few days
after the verdict. I get a call from a woman
who says to me, mister Bow, he said, man who.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Tried to Dave Rant. The case. Yes, he says, your
coin is innocent. He said, how do you know, because
my husband is the murderer.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Quick has he heard that bomb? Thought of one name,
Joseph Aston, the same name provided by the anonymous tipster
all those years ago.
Speaker 7 (23:11):
And I said, let me drive over to the Aston's address.
And I drive over and I knock on the door.
The young girl comes to the door, and I said, Hi,
my name is Michael Baum. I wonder if I could
talk to you. She looked around to see if anybody was,
you know, following me. She stuck my hand, led me in.
She took me up to her apartment. She lived above
(23:32):
a store, and finally she said to me, I'm the
woman how called. And she says, my husband, Joseph was
the one who killed a rabbi. And I said, well,
you know, why don't you come Why didn't you come forward?
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Why didn't why did you wait? What was the problem?
Speaker 7 (23:48):
She says, I knew your client, David Rant was innocent,
and I didn't want to come forward because I'm thinking
he's going to get acquitted and then I don't have
to reveal to the world that my husband was the murderer,
that my husband murdered around by, she said, but after
he was convicted, I felt bad.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
I was afraid to give you my name. Her name
was Teresa Aston, and the problem was that her husband, Joseph,
had died after confessing the murder to his wife and Teresa,
she was still afraid to testify.
Speaker 7 (24:20):
When Rant's appeals were exhausted, I went back to Teresa
and I said, Teresa, I need your help. And I
knew she was religious, and I said, your husband's soul
will never rest knowing that an innocent man is in
jail for something that he did. Phuease help me, and
she agreed to help. She finally agreed to sign an affidavit.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Fate helped Teresa got arrested. Bomb offered legal help. Teresa
said she testified, but it didn't matter. The judge thought
she was a liar. Years passed, then decades David Rant
had remained in prison.
Speaker 7 (25:04):
It was a matter of justice, and I could not
let it rest. I just would not let it rest.
If there's any hope, any chance, I'm going to fight.
David wrote to me letters over the years, begging me
for help, sending me Christmas cards every year, asking about
my kids. It was almost heartbreaking, quite frankly. I would
love getting letters from him and hearing from him, but
(25:28):
it was very difficult, very emotional, quite frankly. And then
I got another call. It was twenty eleven. It was
in the spring, and I got a call. Mister Baum,
my name is Max Leebman. Do you remember me? Do
I remember you? It's only been twenty years. Yes, I
remember you. You were one of the thirteen year old
(25:49):
kids that testified at the Ranta case. He says he'd
been thinking about this case for twenty years. He said
it had always been on his mind, that had always
bothered him.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
He said the.
Speaker 7 (26:00):
Cops called him in and he went into that lineup.
He said he was scared to death. He comes from
a Laura abiding family. The community was very laurabiding. They
believed in what the police did and what the police said.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
He said.
Speaker 7 (26:11):
They took him into the lineup and told him pick
the guy with the big nose. He said, I looked
at the lineup, your client was obviously the one with
the big nose, and I picked out David Ranta. He says,
I never saw him before. I had no idea who
he was. The cop told me who to pick out.
I picked him out.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Here's Max Lieberman speaking on CNN years later.
Speaker 12 (26:32):
As I was walking in the room to the lineup,
he basically told me that I should pick up the
guy with the biggest notes. I was too young back
then to realize that this was a setup. As I
grew older and saw more and more of this wrongful convictions,
it really bothered me. I mean, it's something that bothered
me very much until two years ago. I decided I
(26:55):
have to get it off my chest. I have to
tell the authorities what happened.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Then.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Max Lieberman didn't name Scarcela as the cop who told
him who to pick thar Scarcella was in charge of
the lineup in any case. At the time, for Michael Baum,
it felt like too little, too late.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I said, what the hell am I supposed to do
with this information?
Speaker 7 (27:17):
Now? Who's going to give a damn? Twenty years after
the fact, Ranta was convicted in nineteen ninety one. This
is now twenty eleven, but by an incredible coincidence, a
few months later. This was in the December of two
thousand and eleven, Hines, the DA comes to my office.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Remember when the Rabbi's murder case occurred. Charles Hines had
just been elected Brooklyn District Attorney, that's for the first time,
and he'd made prosecuting David Ranta a lynchpin of his
early career. His office had fought every Ran to appeal.
But twenty years later, it's an election year and Hines
(27:57):
has a new thought.
Speaker 7 (28:00):
Starting this new unit, the Conviction Integrity Unit, to look
at old cases, to look at cases where people have
been convicted who may very well been innocent. And does
anybody here know of any case where you have an
innocent coin in jail? Then I raised my hand, mister Hines,
I have a case I'd like to talk.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
To you about after the break. A third point of view.
Speaker 13 (28:32):
I always somehow knew I wanted to be a lawyer.
I had a couple lawyers in my family, but honestly
and truly was influenced heavily by law and order.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
I just couldn't stop watching the TV show.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
This is Taylor Coss. He went from watching a prosecutor
on TV to being a prosecutor in the Brooklyn District
Attorney's Office.
Speaker 13 (28:53):
I grew up in Brooklyn, so I thought working for
the Brooklyn DA's office was the appropriate office to be in,
get back to the community where up and stuff like that.
Speaker 5 (29:01):
And then from there.
Speaker 13 (29:03):
During the time I was there was when the Conviction
Integraty Unit was formed.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
That's the unit Hinz form to look at questionable convictions.
Speaker 13 (29:11):
I just thought it was really interesting. It was something different.
I had been in the office for a decade already,
and I thought, this is a way perhaps to have
a real impact. The idea and the concept that individuals
wrongfully convicted had never crossed my mind up until that point.
You become programmed to believe that all of these convictions
are legitimate, you know, you don't even.
Speaker 5 (29:31):
Question them at all.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
So COS joined the new unit as its first staff attorney.
Speaker 5 (29:37):
I got there on day one. Rant was the president
waiting for me.
Speaker 13 (29:40):
I had, you know, I had one time had the
beautiful corner office with the windows and it was nice
and lovely.
Speaker 5 (29:45):
It was awesome.
Speaker 13 (29:46):
Then, you know, the Conviction Integrity Unit didn't have anything.
Speaker 5 (29:50):
There was no bureau, there were no offices anything.
Speaker 13 (29:52):
So I was given a tiny office in the Appeals
unit that was literally like a box. It was no windows,
maybe six square It felt like it was a maybe
eight square feet and just stacked from top to bottom
with cardboard boxes of cases.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
It was terrible.
Speaker 5 (30:08):
I mean Ranta itself, I think was thirteen boxes.
Speaker 13 (30:11):
And I just was completely and totally intimidated by the mountain,
you know, by the mountains of files and everything. And
I just dove headfirst into it, you know, and I
was like, this is amazing.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Taylor Coss immediately thought something about the Ranta case looked off.
Speaker 13 (30:30):
If you look at Randa on paper, on paper, not
knowing anything else, no color, commentary, nothing else on paper,
you say strong case. And all you do is you
start with the first person, the jeweler, right, he was
the robbery victim. He was right there, maybe what five
ten feet closer at points, and you talk to him
and he says, you know, with emphasis, not Randa. Never Ranta.
(30:54):
You know, was never Randa, and in fact doesn't really
look like Randa. Then you say to yourself, well, this
is a problem, alm right.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Piece by piece, Taylor Coss went through the file, and
as he did, troubling facts started to accumulate. He started
to wonder about other suspects, like Joe Aston.
Speaker 13 (31:16):
If you look at the DD fives on the case, right,
you know, the detective's reports In all of those DD fives,
you'll never find the name David Ranta. You will find
Joe Aston's name. A few times it was clear that
Aston was a real suspect, and then, of course, at
the end of April, Aston dies in an untimely death.
Teresa Aston claims that her now deceased husband, Joseph Austen,
(31:42):
confessed to her that he did this crime. So my
gut feeling was this, I believe he was the primary
suspect at that time. I believe that Scarcela thought that
he did it, and he was the only one that
they had any eyes on, And I think he knew
that he would never be able to close the case
on Aston as it stood, and for him then that's
(32:02):
an abject.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Failure, right, So what does he have to do? Has
to close the case somehow.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
So Dax, I'm going to tell you this explanation by
Coss seems a little Coca Maimi. Coss says, Detective Scarcella
can't close the case if the purpose did which I
don't understand. Of course, you can close a case if
the purpose did. So. Cause's theory is that because the
guy's dead, Sarcella can't get the headlines that he really
(32:32):
yearns for, and rather than go with the dead guy,
he jin's up a case against someone else. I don't
know about that anyhow.
Speaker 13 (32:42):
Heavy action on this case, tremendous political and environmental pressure
to solve this case, and all of a sudden, now
Alan Bloom, career criminal, Alan Bloom comes forward and now says,
I got it.
Speaker 5 (32:53):
I got your guy.
Speaker 13 (32:54):
It's David ran It's it's you know, I got the guy.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
That's what he says.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And then one day, Costs made a discard that convinced
him of Ranta's innocence and also convinced him that nefarious
forces were'd work inside his own office. Now this story,
if you didn't think it was already, gets crazy.
Speaker 13 (33:17):
So I was wandering alone and I walked into what
I didn't even know existed at the time, which was
a separate appeals fileroom. I didn't even know the thing existed.
I would never an appeals and never handle appeals, so
I had no idea. So I just started wandering around
in the appeals fileroom, and out of the corner of
my eye, I.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
See the name Rantha. I'm like, what the heck is this?
Speaker 13 (33:35):
And there's a box that says Ranta kind of poking
out from the back, So I immediately grab it and
I go back to my office and there's a bunch
of things in there, and one of the things in
there is an audio tape, and I'm like, what the
heck's this audio tape? I play it and it's clearly
Ranta in a telephone call while he was incarcerated, being recorded.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
So this is the voice of David Ranta from nineteen
ninety one.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
Everything. Maybe God, I was writing to hear from you, Dave.
Speaker 13 (34:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Well, I had to.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Let no profile and everything because some way they were
doing it, maybe investigating, and I couldn't fathom what was
going on.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
I really couldn't at first.
Speaker 13 (34:14):
This is way way, way before corrections, was taping every call.
So really no circumstances that I could think of that
the call should have been taped legitimately. But it was
interesting because he was claiming he was innocent in the
call and asking this individual for help.
Speaker 14 (34:34):
She's a witnessed against me, she's a witness against you.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
She knows who did it, Yeah, she knows who took
him in it.
Speaker 13 (34:41):
Right, Brandon doesn't know he's being recorded has no reason
to think he's being recorded, and all he does is
protest is innocence. And yet here's the DA's office freaking
recording the guy, which is just absurd.
Speaker 5 (34:53):
You weren't allowed to do that.
Speaker 13 (34:55):
He's represented by a council, so you have no You're
not allowed to talk to him. You're not allowed to
be a part of any kind versation with him. Not
allowed to do this.
Speaker 5 (35:01):
You don't have a warrant, you don't have any order
to do this.
Speaker 13 (35:04):
You're illegally recording, and you certainly never turned it over
when it had been interesting, by the way, for the
jury to know then in a recorded a conversation when
nobody knew he was listening that Randa was in fact
asserting his innocence.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Just to be clear, Taylor cost is saying that his office,
the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, committed a crime in order
to convict an innocent man. It's a twist right out
of law and order. Cos wanted to know where the
tape came from. He began by sitting down with Ranta
and playing him the tape.
Speaker 14 (35:44):
Ranta was he was obviously thrown He was like, what
is this? Why am I being recorded, who is this?
I don't know what this is. I don't know, I
don't remember. I said, you gotta know what this is.
Who are you talking to?
Speaker 4 (35:55):
Who's talking?
Speaker 14 (35:56):
Who's recording you? Dude? Who is this? So after like
an hour and a half, all he could come up
with was that he believed that it was a person
named Monty from the car wash? What car wash? Oh
went over by this area. I don't remember which one.
You don't remember the guy? You don't know him? Why
would he be calling?
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Oh?
Speaker 14 (36:14):
He was you know, he was involved in everything. He
was a friend everybody. I thought he could help. Blah
blah blah blah. What locate you know? So he had
no only those is Manty from the car wash.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
So now Taylor Kass, who was short and a little roundish,
who sometimes wears what looks like a backpack, goes on
the hunt like a real, you know, detective out there
law and order style.
Speaker 14 (36:35):
It's like, I'm a detective, you know. And by the way,
I kind of I kind of was into it, you know,
like when you're an Ada, You're always like I want
to be a detective. Yeah, I'm like detectives literally pounding
the payment and we actually go into a car wash
where one of the guys is like, I think, I think,
I remember when I bought the place that there was
a guy named Monty. He used to hang out here,
but I'm not sure. Call the owner. The owner of
(36:57):
the car washes down in Florida. Owner of the car
rush gets on the phone with us. The guy says,
you know what, that sounds vaguely familiar. I don't know.
Speaker 13 (37:04):
Go to the.
Speaker 14 (37:04):
Funeral parlor around the corner. Around the corner. They were
here at the time, they may know something. So we
go around the corner.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
This turns into one of those long shaggy dog stories,
but Daxx I'm into.
Speaker 14 (37:17):
It, and we buzz the funeral parlor. Nobody's there, but
the owner says we'll be there. He comes over fifteen
minutes later. Flavorite take friend and the owner of the
fucking funeral parlor is like, Oh, that's my brother in law.
What gives us the name of his guy? He's a
professional fucking confidential informant for the FEDS, for all atf
(37:40):
for all these places. Me and Ronny can find the guy.
Takes me a while, but he finally talks to me
and tells me that he was specifically asked to do
it by someone at the DA's office and tells me
a story. Whoever would pay better he would work with,
and at the time he was working with the narcotics guys,
and the narcotics guys mentioned the name Random, and Monty
(38:00):
knew him from around the neighborhood, and so he says, Oh,
I know that's I know that fucking guy. I know
that fucking guy.
Speaker 9 (38:06):
Right.
Speaker 14 (38:06):
They said, what what do you mean you know that guy?
You fucking know that guy? Hold on, they say, They
pick him up, They walk him over to an Ada's office.
They set him in a chair and the Ada says, oh,
you know you know David Randam's like, yeah, of course
I'm not doing so he's like, so, what are you
gonna fucking do about it? And the guy says, what
do you mean about it?
Speaker 7 (38:26):
He's like, what do you say?
Speaker 14 (38:26):
Oh, you're going to record a conversation for him. Oh,
that's so nice of you. And he's like, uh, what
do you mean is that guy you're gonna record if
he calls you from If he calls you, oh, he
just called me from Jolie. Oh, if he calls you again,
you're going to record it. Did the ADA get to
the detectives to give him all the recording equipment they
set up, set it up on his phone, and they
basically tell him, get him to say anything he can
(38:46):
about doing it, and to illegally record him while he's
in jail. So I say, who was it? Who's the idea?
He has no idea. He describes where the office was,
how he got there specifically.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
Yeah, so cass is on the trail now like a bloodhound,
like a real detective. He drew up a photo array
and asked Monty to identify who asked him to make
the recording. Monty pointed to a picture of the Deputy
District attorney at the time.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
A big shot in the office.
Speaker 14 (39:18):
It was clear what he had done. You know that
that should have gotten this barred probably at the time.
He's just fucking outrageous behavior.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Finally, after months of work, Taylor Coss brought all the
evidence of David Rance's wrongful conviction to his bosses, and
the result was something extraordinary. Here's Michael Baum again. He
wasn't David Rance's lawyer anymore, but he still followed the
case closely.
Speaker 7 (39:46):
One morning in March I'm right on the train and
I open up to New York Times. I'm going to work,
and they're in the front page. There's a story about
David Ranta.
Speaker 1 (39:59):
He's going to be and I said, and I cried.
Speaker 8 (40:07):
Talks of the District Attorney charge and hiens by John
o'bara for the people. And we have concluded, at for
rather extensive investigation by the unit that is a conviction
integrity unit of the District Attorney's office, that the evidence
no longer establishes the defendants guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 15 (40:24):
Okay, thank you. It's clear that the effects of this
case have been devastating. To say that I'm sorry for
what you have endured would be an understatement and grossly inadequate,
but I say it to you anyway. Based on the
record made here today, it's okay. The defendant's motion to
vacate the judgment of conviction is granted. Sir, you are
(40:49):
free to go.
Speaker 1 (40:58):
As I said from the and I had nothing to
do with this case.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
And what did Louis Scarcella have to say that day?
Speaker 9 (41:07):
Detective Scarcella retired. How are you, sir? What do you
think about this release of Ranta?
Speaker 4 (41:14):
I really can't talk about it, but well, what I
will say is this, I'm certainly not running from you.
Speaker 6 (41:21):
I stand by the confession. I stand by the case.
Speaker 9 (41:25):
Did you coach witnesses? No, sir, did you ever instruct
the thirteen year old witness to pick out the guy
with the big nose? I don't never, No, sir, No, sir,
didn't do it.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Noson. After that everything changed. Francis Robless, that's Frenchie, did
her stories about Teresa Gomez and others. Dozens of Scarcella's
old cases were reopened, a new district attorney was elected
on a platform of reform, and Louis Scarcella became the
most notorious cop in New York. Then, one day, about
(42:02):
a year after the conviction was overturned, Michael Baum ran
into Louis Scarcella in a Brooklyn courthouse.
Speaker 7 (42:09):
He was sitting on the bench, well dressed, look good.
He was Elbatara and we chit chatted, and I said, Louis,
you know, I used to think the devil was somebody
with horns and a tail. And I says, you know what, Louis,
the devil was smart and looking good and dresses well
and articulate. Not the guy in the in the red suit,
you know with the tail and the pitchfork.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yes, Louis, you wore the devil.
Speaker 11 (42:33):
Oh yeah, I'm the devil and disgraced devil. Yeah yeah,
Well what can I tell you?
Speaker 1 (42:46):
This episode was produced by Drew Nellis. Our associate producer
and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Sound designed for today's
episode by Bianca Salinas, Dax Devlin Ross and Me. Steve
Fishman are your hosts. The Burden is a production of
Orbit Media. Thank You, See You next time. Season two
(43:12):
of The Burden Empire on Blood will be available everywhere
you get your podcasts on August seventh. All episodes will
be available early and ad free, along with exclusive bonus
content on Orbit's newly launched True Crime Clubhouse, our subscription
channel on Apple Podcasts. It's only two ninety nine a month.
Hosts And Creators
Dax-Devlon Ross
Steve Fishman
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