The Times-Tribune from Scranton, Pennsylvania • 69

Justice Story 2 yt vt Anthony Grace told jury Alice called him twice on night of tragedy. She wanted a drink. Carl Andrade said he had known Alice 'well' for more than five years. -4 with a nervous licking of the lips, that he had known Alice Crimmins on an in-timate basis iwu Carl Andrade her $50 a week from October 1964, to July 1965. Alice told about the time her husband caught Andrade in her bed, "in a state of undress" as she put it primly.

She was in the same bed, also "in a state of undress." Then Edmund Crimmins burst into the room. Q. And what were you doing? A. We weren't doing anything. Eddie saw Andrade and they had a scuffle and he (Eddie) threw him (Andrade) out.

iJ an. asv'Ji: A1 UWE rvuHT in his testimony. Rorech recalled mmina Mrs. Sophie Earomirski, Anthony Grace 4 to you? The DA made no threats to you?" "No, sir," Rorech said, perspiring. Although Alice Crimmins was stunned by the testimony of her onetime boy friend, she recovered with youthful resilience and was composed when she faced the state's second "shock" witness Mrs.

Earomirski, who was to become known as "the woman in the window." The plump blonde mother of three testified that the Tuesday night of July 13, 1965, had been excessively hot. She had arisen at 3 a.m. to get a cooling-drink of water. As she sat at her window, she saw some people coming across the mall from the direction of the Crimmins apartment. A woman, said Mrs.

Earomirski, carried a bundle "like a child," and led a dog. There was a little boy and a man with her, too. They walked to a car about 50 feet from Mrs. Earomirski's third-floor window. She could hear their voices.

Mrs. Saromirski said the man took the bundle from the woman and tossed it into the car's back seat. She said the woman cried: "My God, don't do that to her!" known as "the woman in the window," dealt Alice's defense a blow. A kiss-and-tell lover said of Mrs. Crimmins: "She confessed niui i itiw over cocktails on June 10, 1966 almost a year after little Missy Crimmins' death.

He said he told Alice that he had called her at 2 o'clock the morning of July 14, 1965, and got no answer. He thought of going to her apartment, but changed his mind. Rorech quoted Alice as saying: "Oh, my God. I wish you had come over." Rorech said he then told her: "You mean if I had come over this (the disappearance and death of the children) wouldn't have happened?" "Yes," was Mrs. Crimmins' answer Rorech testified.

Rorech continued his story in a voice so low that Judge Farrell asked him to speak louder. He told of a motel tryst with Alice on the night of Sept. 9, 1966, when they had several drinks and began talking about the children. "Alice started crying," Rorech testified. "And she said 'there's no reason for them to be killed.

The reason had been A LICE TOLD about swimming in a pool in the nude at Rorech's home. But not once did she admit knowing what happened to Missy; not once did she admit telling anyone that she would rather see the child dead than relinquish her custody. As cross-examiner, Lombardino named man after man in Alice's life-some of whom the omniscient reporters didn't know about. One was Pasquale Picassio, the children's barber. Alice said she had 10 dates with the barber in the fall of 1964.

She denied any intimacy in the back seat of Pasquale's car, "be 99 to me Rorech said to her: "Do you mean Evelyn?" He quoted her as saying: Evelyn was the former maid for Mrs. Crimmins who had quit in February 1965, while Alice was on a trip to the Caribbean. CRIMMINS TESTIFIED that he had known about three of Alice's boy friends Joseph Rorech, Carl Andrade and Anthony Grace. He admitted to seeking his custody suit "evidence" many times by standing beneath his wife's bedroom in early morning hours. There was a hush in the courtroom as Asst.

Dist. Atty. Mosley moved closer to Crimmins, surveyed him curiously without speaking, took a step backward and then asked in a dry, flat voice: "Did you kill your children?" Without a noticeable reflex to the impact of the question, Crimmins said: "No, sir and my wife didn't either." Two Phone Calls Anthony Grace's testimony was more of a puzzle than a help to the jurors. A reluctant witness, he was coaxed by the prosecution into saying that Alice called him twice on the night of July 13, 1965, and wanted to drink with him. He wasn't asked why she found it so urgent to drink that night.

He wasn't even asked if he had actually seen Alice that night. Andrade, in his brief appearance as a witness, made it clear that he, as a bachelor had known Alice well for more than five vears. Hp said that Alio had jyjRS. EAROMIRSKI quoted the man as saying to the woman: "Now, you're sorry." His voice trailed away. The woman said: "Please don't say that." The man and the woman helped the boy into the car and they all drove away.

Q. And do you see that woman in the courtroom now? "That is the woman," said Mrs. Earomirski, pointing directly at Alice Crimmins. In her second outburst of the trial. Alice screamed: "You liar! You liar! You liar!" Why She Waited Mrs.

Earomirski's credibility was attacked in cross-examination. She explained that she had waited for two years to come forward because the case "was unsolved" and she feared "the accomplice was still at large." For three hours, the defense hammered at the fact that Mrs. Earomirski had been in various hospitals. She denied that she had ever been under psychiatric care. There were tears in her eyes when she left the witness stand.

Mrs. Earomirski's testimony ended the state's case. cause I don't believe in it." Judge Far-rell's gavel silenced the crowd. At last, Lombardino said to Alice: "No further questions." She left the stand. Insists It's Murder Mosely, in summing up for the state, insisted to the jury that murder had been proved against the defendant.

Harrison, in the chief defense summation, called the state's case nothing but "smoke and dirt" and said that murder had not been proved "beyond a reasonable doubt." Harrison ridiculed the testimony of Mrs. Earomirski, the "woman in the window," as being too flimsy to accept. He referred to Rorech contemptuously as "a perjurer, a philanderer and a sick, sick man without a conscience." "Someone tightened the screws on Mr. Rorech," Harrison said. "I wish I knew who it was." Lombardino's closing arguments for the state were in a very low key.

Judge Farrell, after giving the jurors five verdicts to choose from, advised them again that Mrs. Crimmins had been on trial for murder, not for her morals. Farrell sent the jurors home for the weekend and told them to return Monday, prepared to bring in their verdict. Throughout Sunday, a festive air prevailed among Alice Crimmins' supporters and her defense lawyers. Arrangements were made to hold a champagne victory celebration at a restaurant Monday after Alice's acquittal.

The defense expected an instant verdict after the jury's return. But there wasn't to be an instant verdict. The witness seemed to slump deeper into his chair and there was a tightening of the muscles about his mouth. Rorech's next words, though spoken softly, sounded like a pistol shot in the quiet courtroom. "And then she said-'Forgive me, Joseph, I killed Alice Crimmins, fists clenched and eyes" blazing, screamed from her seat at the defense table: "Joseph! How could you do this? This is not true! Joseph you of all people!" As Alice's screaming died into a fitful sob, Rorech looked at her and his mouth formed the words: "You said it.

You said it." As Rorech later walked away from the stand, Alice glared at Mosley and demanded: "What did you do to him?" And this was the attack that Harrison and Barron took the next day in their cross-examination of Rorech what hold did the district attorney's office have on the witness that had enabled them to wrest his story of Alice's confession out oi mm in nis previous appearance be THE DEFENSE lawyers faced an lm- iuie me grana jury, Korech had sai mnning aDoui sucn a confession. to Judge Farrell's ruling, the jurors had heard surprisingly little about Alice's nromisruitv and her bwvprs rnnlrl kopn Under cross-examination, Rorech explained that his conscience had long bothered him. Finally, on the day of his daughter's first communion is the identical age of he had decided to reveal what Alice had told him about killing Missy. Man of Aliases it that way by not allowing Alice on the stand. But if she did not proclaim her innocence of murder from the stand, the THE FIRST thing the jury did Mon-jurors would probably ask: "Why? What day was to have lunch.

Then delib-is she hiding? Yet Alice's appearance erations began and they continued for once asked him to intercede with her maid to keep her from testifying for her husband in his custody suit. Among the early witnesses was Dr. Milton Helpern, New York City medical examiner. He attributed little Missy's death to "mechanical strangulation." While he could not pinpoint the time of death, Helpern estimated that the child had died "about three hours before the time her mother said she had last seen her alive." Mrs. Crimmins previously had said she last saw Missy alive at midnight.

Helpern's testimony meant, then, that the child was dead at or around 9 p.m. Only the prosecution officials were aware of the bombshell drama that was building up in the upcoming testimony of a witness whom they had guarded under the label of Mr. X. Mr. was Joseph Rorech, a Long Island builder and father of seven children with whom Alice had many times frolicked in the nude in the Rorech swimming pool and with whom, she later was to admit, she had met in motel trysts.

Rorech left no doubt in the minds of the jury, as he testified reluctantly and more than 12 hours, duri nff whirh tha to ask any question he wished about her private past. Harrison now called Alice Crimmins to the stand. She stepped forward in a dainty black dress, her delicate face framed in a ruffled white neck piece. One writer said she looked like a "Victorian governess," but there was nothing Victorian in Alice's answers as her lawyer, getting in his licks before the prosecutor, asked her about her private life. Alice told about trips with Grace on cruise ships, private boats and at a convention in Atlantic City.

She said he paid Rorech admitted that he had consorted with many women and had used as many as six aliases in registering with them at motels. Defense attorneys could not budge the witness from his story that Alice had told him: "I killed her." After those words, Rorech said, Alice added piously: "They (the children) will understand. They know it's for the best." Defense counsel Barron said sarcastically to Rorech: "And suddenly you had pangs of conscience after the life you've led. No threats were ever made jury foreman frequently called for rereading of certain portions of testimony and studies of certain trial exhibits. At 1:55 a.m.

Tuesday, the jury returned its verdict, finding Alice Crimmins guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. Alice fainted. Her husband sobbed loudly. Alice became so hysterical that she was removed to a hospital, where she remained for several days under observation. Eventually she was removed to a single cell at the Women's House of Detention in Manhattan..