The Trial: Part Four
The next day, when court convened, Barbara saw Sam standing at the back of the courtroom. Handsome, wearing a light summer suit and neat bow tie, he looked squeaky clean and respectable. Barbara pointed him out to Jack Hardy, who looked and nodded. Then, as the day's proceedings began, the world Barbara had made for herself, fell completely apart.
Prosecutor Leavy rose and said, "Call Sam Sirianni to the stand."
Sam came down the aisle without a glance at Barbara and walked up to be sworn in. Barbara looked in disbelief at Jack Hardy and stammered, "But -- but -- Mr. Hardy, that's Sam, my alibi witness, the man I spent that night with in a motel. How can he be a witness for the prosecution'"
All Hardy could do was stare at her incredulously. Barbara leaned to the other side and quickly whispered something to Emmett Perkins. The jug-eared co-defendant reared back in his chair, looked at her in shock, and quickly passed the news to Jack Santo, who was sitting next to him. Santo's square jaw clenched as if he had been slapped.
After Sam took the stand and stated his name, Leavy asked him, "What is your occupation'"
His answer: "Police officer."
"Where are you employed'"
"Los Angeles Police Department."
Sam testified that a policewoman named Shirley Parker, working undercover as a women's jail inmate, had reported to her superiors that an intimate friendship had begun between Barbara Graham and Donna Prow. A check of Prow's record showed that she was not a criminal type but rather doing time for vehicular manslaughter: a year in jail and five years on probation. She was approached with a deal to reduce that jail time and probation if she would participate in a police trap to get a confession from Barbara Graham. Prow had agreed.
Through Prow, Sam had contacted Barbara in the women's jail, using a password Prow had given him. He related how he had met with Barbara three times: August 7, 10, and 12, and how on the third visit he had been wired with a Minifon and had recorded the conversation between them.
At that point in the trial, prosecutor Leavy requested and was given permission by the court to call in police electronics technician Roger Otis for the purpose of playing the recorded conversation for the jury.
Barbara could do nothing but sit stunned, one hand on her cheek, as the sound of her voice filled the courtroom. Her words, when Sirianni asked for her assurance as to where she had been on the night of the murder, were clear and indisputable as to Perkins, Santo, True, and Baxter Shorter.
"I was with them," she said.
At the end of the handsome young officer's testimony, Judge Fricke recessed court for the day to give Barbara's attorney, Jack Hardy, time to regroup. As reporters rushed from the courtroom to file their stories, two matrons handcuffed Barbara, while bailiffs were doing the same to Perkins and Santo. The usually inscrutable Santo snapped angrily at his buddy, "This is what we get for having a goddamned woman with us!"
When Barbara arrived back at the jail, she learned that Donna Prow, "Candy Pants," had been taken back to court that afternoon. She would later hear that Donna had been re-sentenced to time served and no probation, and released.
Donna immediately left Los Angeles.
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