Varying shades of truth influence nearly all aspects of our lives. Indeed, there is a lot of truth in the cliché, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” We tend to see many things through the prism of our cultural backgrounds, religious beliefs, education, prejudices, and personal experiences and preferences.

As an investigative reporter for thirty years, my job was to discern the always elusive real truth. In fact, the only reason for the existence of investigative reporters is the need to expose truth. Still, my truth often deviated from the interpretations of people with access to the same set of “facts.” As a result, courts sometimesdecided the accuracy of my exposés. Fortunately, I never lost. Which is the main reason I survived for three decades in a career noted for its short shelf life.

I was reminded of my “quest for truth” while reading an unrelated news story about retiring U.S. Representative William Delahunt of Massachusetts. The seven-term Congressman is invoking his lame duck privilege by proposing legislation that would be the equivalent of political suicide for colleagues running for re-election. Delahunt’s bill imposes state sales taxes on goods sold on the Internet. Some states already receive revenue from Internet sales. Delahunt’s measure, which makes the tax mandatory nationwide is probably dead on arrival in Congress.  

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20009603-38.html 

Many years ago, Bill Delahunt and I were comrades in arms in “defending truth and justice.” He was District Attorney of Norfolk County, Massachussets and I was a lame duck investigative reporter for Boston’s ABC affiliate, WCVB, then described in the New York Times as the nation’s best local television station—a title it was willing to relinquish in favor of higher ratings and bigger profits.

Anyway, my swan song WCVB exposé accused various lawmen of subverting the criminal justice system to frame Myles J. Connor, a notorious art thief and career criminal with an uncanny talent for bargaining his way out of prison. But as I wrote in Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, a deal he made with Delahunt to help locate the bodies of two murder victims backfired. 

Among Connor’s admirers was one of Walpole Prison’s most dangerous inmates, a mentally deranged vicious killer named Tommy Sperrazza. He occasionally signed letters, “Manson,” in tribute to California’s imprisoned lunatic. Sperrazza was a suspect in numerous homicides, including the murders of two teen-aged girls, who disappeared after witnessing him kill a man outside a Boston bar. Their bodies had not been found.

Looking again for keys to the prison gates, Connor approached Sperrazza with an absurd proposal. If Tommy would tell him the location of the bodies, Myles promised to hijack a helicopter following his release and fly into Walpole to facilitate the killer’s escape. Nobody in their right mind would believe such a proposition. But according to prison psychiatrists, Sperrazza was legally nuts. He drew a map for Myles.

The victims were buried in western Massachusetts, more than a hundred miles from the scene of the murder. Norfolk County District Attorney William Delahunt made a deal with Connor. In September, 1977, he led investigators to the girls’ remains. He was paroled after serving only one year of a four year sentence.

A team of lawmen decided it was time for payback. FBI agents first gathered evidence to charge him with bank robbery. The case was weak and a jury acquitted Connor, even though he later admitted to me that he was guilty.

There is, however, a law enforcement maxim, “If you can’t catch them on the swing, catch them on the slide.” Immediately after the innocent verdict, Connor was linked to the murders of the two girls. The chief witness was none other than Sperrazza. He said Connor gave him a primer in how to kill the victims―a remarkable claim for a guy believed to have murdered a dozen people or more. Myles barely knew Tommy outside of prison. Nor did he have a motive to commit the murders.

Enter on the scene John Connolly, the rogue FBI agent convicted two decades later for his dealings with informants. Connolly promised Sperrazza all sorts of rewards if he linked Connor to the murders, including financial aid for his family. If he didn’t cooperate, the agent threatened to file charges against the murderer’s wife and place their children in a foster home. Sperrazza’s decision didn’t require a lot of deep thought.

Based on the testimony of Tommy Sperrazza and a line-up of witnesses whose pictures should be on Post Office walls, Connor was convicted of murdering the two girls. His conviction flew in the face of an abundance of evidence that he was being railroaded. Justice prevailed when the verdict was overturned because prosecutorial misconduct.  Connor was acquitted following a second trial.

Meantime, FBI agent John Connolly was trying to even scores with Bill Delahunt for making a deal with Connor. He tried to induce one of the trial witnesses into framing the D.A. When I learned of the scheme, I confronted Connolly in an ambush interview that prompted the U.S. Attorney in Boston to label me “a tool of organized crime.”

It was an era in which Bill and I seemed to be standing alone in defense of the integrity of the criminal justice system and we have since remained good friends. Although I don’t generally take pleasure in another person’s pain, I couldn’t help myself when John Connolly got caught up in one of the FBI’s biggest ever scandals 10 years after my encounter with the agent. I thought it was poetic justice that he was sentenced to prison for corrupt relationships with informants.  

More recently, Delahunt has been criticized for failing to prosecute Amy Bishop in the 1986 death of her brother. She is the University of Alabama at Huntsville professor accused earlier this year of murdering three fellow faculty members and wounding two others after being denied tenure. The 1986 shotgun death of Bishop’s brother was ruled accidental. In the wake of criticism about the handling of the Massachusetts shooting, Delahunt and his then assistant D.A. claim that investigators failed to provide them evidence that Bishop intentionally killed her brother.

That is their version of truth. And for the sake of old times, I hope it is the real truth.   

My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.