Born to Be Wild by Barry Bowe

Author:Barry Bowe [BOWE, BARRY]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780446565899
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

21

On Monday morning the sun came out for the first time since the trial started. The date was December 5.

The jurors were rested from their day off. Some of them had attended church services on Sunday morning and gone to see Star Wars in the afternoon. Others had lounged in their rooms all day watching football games on television.

Jim DelBello stood at the prosecutor’s table. He looked down at the handwritten list of witnesses on his yellow legal pad and called out, “The Commonwealth calls John Weir.”

Jackie Weir and Bill Standen had been best friends for eleven years. He and Bobby Nauss had been close friends for a shorter length of time. A lean twenty-seven-year-old with dark eyes, he was wearing a suit and Frank Hazel had made sure that his hair had been cut to a presentable length. If he was feeling at all nervous, it didn’t show. He entered the courtroom and walked briskly to the witness stand. After swearing his oath, he locked eyes with Bobby and sneered when Bobby tried to stare him down.

“Mr. Weir,” DelBello said, approaching his witness, “tell the jury what occurred between Mr. Nauss and Liz Lande in Kostick’s Bar in Upper Darby in the early part of 1971.”

“It was either the first or second time I met Liz,” Jackie Weir began, looking directly at Bobby. His voice was steady. “They had an argument and Bobby backhanded her. I mean, he knocked her off the stool. Liz flew backward and landed on the floor on her ass.”

“Taking your attention now to the summer of 1971, did you have occasion to go to the Lande house in the nighttime along with the defendant?”

Weir nodded.

“Bobby had talked to her on the phone from the Over-brook Shopping Center on City Line Avenue,” Jackie Weir replied, “and we proceeded from there.”

“Was anyone there at the time, aside from you and the defendant?”

“No.”

“By what means did you get to the shopping center?”

“My car. I was driving.”

“What occurred when you got to the residence?”

“In the back alley behind the house, Bobby fired a shot out of the passenger window at her bedroom window.”

“Do you know what weapon was used by the defendant when he fired the shot?”

“A .32 automatic.”

“Did the defendant say anything to explain why he fired that shot?”

“He said he was mad at her.”

“Mad at her?” DelBello repeated in a condescending voice; then he pivoted to face the jury. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his palms faceup. Then he turned back to face the witness.

Under DelBello’s questioning, Jackie Weir said he’d received a phone call from Bobby late on the afternoon of December 12, 1971. Weir said Bobby told him Liz was spending the weekend with him and asked him to come over. But he’d told Bobby he had other plans.

“Now I’m directing your attention to December 13, 1971,” Jim DelBello said, shifting to the morning of the murder. “Did you see the defendant at that time?”

“Yes, I did, around eight-thirty in the morning.”

“What happened?”

“Bobby

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