Priceless

Philadelphia Museum of Art, the story landed on the front page again. Fellow agents who pursued the more traditional FBI crimes, like drugs and robbery, might not seem too interested, but journalists appeared eager to write about art crime and give the stories good play. Each art crime inevitably carried a “hook,” a bit of intrigue, and the public ate it up. The attention was nice, but most important was that it made our local bosses look good, making it easier for them to green-light our next art crime case.

I led one other significant investigation while awaiting my trial in the early 1990s. Violent gangs were hitting high-end jewelry stores in smash-and-grab heists, bolting into the likes of Tiffany, Black, Starr and Frost, and Bailey Banks and Biddle in broad daylight, taking hammers and tire irons to display cases, and dashing off with fistfuls of diamonds and Rolex watches worth tens of thousands of dollars. The hoods came from Philadelphia but had hit more than one hundred stores in five states. I created and led a special task force that not only won federal indictments against thirty gang members but also snared the ringleaders who fenced the stolen loot—two corrupt merchants from Philly’s Jewelers’ Row. Our work made the front page again and I developed long-term sources on Jewelers’ Row.

The successes at work were gratifying, but the accident continued to haunt my life. No matter how hard we tried, Donna and I couldn’t escape it. It always lingered in the background. Neighbors and friends followed developments regularly in the Inquirer and the Camden Courier- Post. Most people meant well, but they asked about the case whenever they saw us, and it was awkward—we didn’t want to be rude, but we wanted to talk about anything else. Meanwhile, the legal bills and delays piled up. Court hearings were scheduled, then postponed, scheduled, then postponed again. I wanted it all to end, but I feared the result. I was driving myself nuts. I needed an escape, something to occupy my mind.

“I gotta find something to do,” I told Donna. “I gotta find a hobby.”

“Yes, you do.”

I found one in baseball. I coached my sons, Kevin and Jeff, in Little League, and we liked to duck down to Baltimore to see my Orioles play at their new, throwback stadium, Camden Yards. On each trip, we fell into a routine: We arrived early for batting practice, got cheap seats, split a pack of baseball cards, and sometimes stayed late to try to snag autographs. Soon, we started attending baseball card shows, and I recognized a market in the Cal Ripken ’82 rookie cards (special Topps edition). The Oriole infielder was hugely popular in Baltimore, but not in Philadelphia. I started driving to card shows and strip mall storefronts near Philly, snapping up as many Ripken cards as possible. I got ’em for about $25 to $50 each. Then I’d drive to shows and events in Baltimore and sell them for $100 or $200 more. The year that Ripken broke the Iron Man record for most consecutive games, I sold the cards for $400. I was making a little extra cash doing something I liked. I thought, Who knows? If I lost my job and landed in prison, I’d need a new career when I got out. Inspired, I branched out, trying my hand at Civil War collectibles and antique firearms. I attended shows, scoured newsletters for bargains, and began to buy, barter, and sell. I even put my Barnes experience to work and dabbled in fine art. I bought a few Picasso prints, and spent weekend afternoons wandering through suburban galleries and flea markets. I daydreamed about finding a long-lost Monet and turning a $1,000 investment into $100,000.

Unbeknownst to me, Donna had other things on her mind. She wanted a third child. I wasn’t so sure. My future was so uncertain. Donna was adamant. “We have to stop putting our life on hold,” she said. Our boys were already four and six. Donna was thirty-five. If we were going to expand our family, now was the time. I nervously agreed. Kristin was born on Thanksgiving Day, and, as it turned out, having a little girl was the best decision we made during those stressful years.

Incredibly, the trial delays continued into 1993, 1994, and beyond. I kept myself as busy as I could with the kids and work, and with my new hobbies and interest in fine art, but every few hours, my thoughts returned to Denis and what lay ahead for me. Each day I crossed the Delaware River on the way to work, I passed New Jersey’s Riverfront State Prison at the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge. It was the place I would be sent if convicted.

One day in 1995, a few weeks before my trial was set to begin, I ran into a member of the prosecution team on South Street in Philadelphia. We had to be careful. We weren’t supposed to talk outside of court.

We exchanged pleasantries and an awkward silence followed. We just stood there. Finally, the person said, “How are you holding up?”

How was I holding up? I kept my cool, and answered with a question of my own. As politely as I could, I said, “Why are you doing this?”

What the person said shook me. “Look, we know this is a bad case, but it’s just one we have to lose at trial.”

The comment shattered my assumption that prosecutors pursued fundamental fairness. As a defendant, I figured the truth, witnesses, and evidence were on my side. It didn’t occur to me that government officials would prosecute a case they did not believe in. We know this is a bad case, but it’s just one we have to lose at trial. I started to stammer a response, but thought better of it, and walked away.

I was forty years old and my hair was gray.

Chapter 7 A NEW LIFE

Camden, New Jersey, 1995.

“WILL THE DEFENDANT PLEASE RISE?”

The jurors shuffled into the courtroom, the forewoman gripping the verdict sheet. I tried to catch her eye. The jury had been out only forty-five minutes. The trial was in its ninth day, unbelievably long for a DUI case, but I thought it was going very well. I testified that I drank four or five beers over eight hours. My attorney, Mike Pinsky, ripped the government witnesses apart, and the paramedics who took the stand said I hadn’t looked drunk. Pamela, the woman Denis met at the bar, described me as sober, the guy who was clearly his friend’s designated driver. The prosecutor stuck to her best evidence—the hospital report showed that my blood alcohol count was .21, so high that I should have had trouble walking, let alone driving.

Fortunately, Pinsky’s experts had by then solved the mystery of the blood test. They explained to the jury that when they closely compared Denis’s medical records with mine, they found something odd: My alleged blood alcohol content, when calculated to the fifth decimal point, was .21232 and Denis’s reading was .21185. It was a difference of just .00047, less than the typical variation found when testing the same vial of blood. This was too close to be a coincidence, my experts testified. Someone at the hospital had mixed up the samples. The standard practice is to test every vial of blood twice—and it looked like someone had tested Denis’s blood twice, and assigned one of the readings to me. Our argument was bolstered when our experts discovered that the hospital didn’t have a method for securing each sample—there were no procedures to keep a proper chain of custody. One of our experts was the former head of the state police crime lab. On the stand, he spoke definitively: The government’s only evidence was worthless.

As the clerk handed the verdict sheet to the judge, my mind raced. Why the quick verdict? Did the jury even take the time to analyze the lab reports? Did they like my lawyer? The prosecutor? Me? A uniformed deputy quietly slipped behind me. What did that mean? Did he plan to take me into custody? Or was he there to protect me?

As the judge unfolded the verdict sheet, the street encounter with that member of the prosecution team flashed in my head—We know it’s a bad case, but it’s just one we have to lose at trial. What if? What if the jury didn’t get that?

The judge cleared his throat. “In the case of New Jersey versus Robert K. Wittman, we find the defendant… not guilty.”

I exhaled deeply and unclenched my fists. I hugged my lawyer. I hugged Donna. I even hugged the prosecutor. The news accounts said I “wept openly.” I wanted to hug the judge, too. For after the verdict, he took the unusual step of publicly stating that he agreed with the jury. He called the blood test evidence bogus, concluding: “He lost control and tragically there was an accident and his passenger lost his life. That’s an accident.”

Donna and I vowed to make a fresh start, and decided to move from suburban New Jersey to suburban