A
Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 1 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
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John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer,
was convicted of murdering his estranged wife,
Sandy, in 1999, though he has always maintained
his innocence. (CBS)
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(CBS) This story originally aired March 26, 2005.
The NFL's Green Bay Packers are the soul of Green Bay,
Wis., a hard-working, blue-collar town that takes pride
in its team and its clean-cut image and generally leaves
violence on the field.
But the town's traditional values were rocked to the
core in 1999, when a jury found one of Green Bay's own
police officers guilty of murder, of strangling his wife
and setting her on fire. The officer, John Maloney, was
sentenced to life in prison.
"Sometimes, I still wake up in the middle of the night
and realize, look around, and come back to reality that
I am in this place. I don't belong in here," says
Maloney, who denies committing the crime.
Maloney has spent the last six years in prison, and his
protests of innocence might have rung hollow if there
weren't so many troubling questions about this case.
Correspondent Susan Spencer reports.
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Maloney says the key to understanding what really
happened is to understand his wife, Sandy.
The Maloneys have three children: Matt, Sean and Aaron.
Matt, the oldest, says his all-American family began
crumbling in the early 1990s, when Sandy developed neck
pain and along with it, a serious addiction to
prescription drugs.
"If she couldn’t get the pills from her doctors, her
friends would provide it for her," says Matt. "They were
no help to her."
Things were so bad that if the boys needed a
prescription, the local pharmacist would make them take
the pill in front of him, to make sure Sandy wouldn't
steal it. But even that didn't work.
"She'd tell me to slip it under my tongue and just keep
it under there until we left the place. And then I'd
spit it out, and she'd take it when we left," recalls
Matt. "I know I shouldn’t have been doing it but I was
so young. Now that I think about it, I can’t believe
someone would do that, especially your own mom."
But Sandy's situation deteriorated, and was complicated
by depression, panic disorder and alcohol. Matt says
they started finding vodka bottles all over the house.
And Maloney says this promoted a lot of arguments: "They
were loud. Yelling and screaming. ... Doors slammed and
stuff like that. I mean, it was, you know, a terrible
time."
A
Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 2 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer,
was convicted of murdering his estranged wife,
Sandy, in 1999, though he has always maintained
his innocence. (CBS) |
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Maloney says that he never abused Sandy physically
during these fights. But at Maloney's trial, prosecutors
told jurors that Sandy had complained about Maloney's
violence to, among others, her psychiatrist, who says
that Sandy showed him the bruises that she said Maloney
had caused.
But Sandy's children said their mother would do anything
to get more drugs. And as for the bruises, Matt says,
"When she was drunk, she'd stumble around and fall into
everything."
Police were called to the Maloney home numerous times,
but a 48 Hours review found no report that made any
reference to Maloney abusing his wife.
"If anyone was fighting, it was my mom hitting my dad,"
says Maloney's son, Sean. "People can say he was abusing
her, or whatever, but in all reality, we’re the ones
that were there and saw the stuff. And if anyone swung
at anyone, it would be my mom hitting my dad."
In 1997, Sandy was drunk and wrecked the family car.
Maloney had enough, moved out, filed for divorce and
later took the boys with him. "It was a dangerous
situation for them to be in," says Maloney. "I should
have done something sooner than when I did."
Maloney's two youngest sons say their father was with
them, putting together bunk beds, at the time police say
he was off murdering their mother. Their support of
Maloney has never wavered.
"He's been in jail or prison since I've been in the
seventh grade. I’m in my second year of college now, so
he missed a lot," says Matt.
But this image of a good man falsely accused got nowhere
at trial, largely because of undercover videotapes that
revealed quite a different side of Maloney. It was a
side jurors felt they couldn't ignore.
A Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 3 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer, was
convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Sandy, in
1999, though he has always maintained his innocence.
(CBS)
Lola Cator has thought about her daughter Sandy every
single day, since 1998, when her daughter died. "This is
just something I'll never get over with," says Cator,
who discovered Sandy's charred body the morning after
the fire. "She was on the couch. She'd been burned."
And from that first instant, Cator blamed Maloney for
her daughter's death: "He wanted her gone. He hated
her."
Cator says she thinks Maloney hated Sandy because she
was dragging her feet on the divorce. By now, Maloney
had a new, much younger girlfriend, a 28-year-old IRS
agent named Tracy Hellenbrand. Cator believed that Sandy
was getting in the way of their new life: "I know he
went there to kill her."
Special Prosecutor Joe Paulus shared Cator's certainty,
and told the jury that Maloney was under stress, deeply
in debt, and desperate to get out of the relationship.
So, Paulus told the jury that Maloney went to Sandy's
house that night to make sure that she'd be in court the
next day. They argued, and Paulus says Maloney hit Sandy
over the head with a blunt object; the wound bled onto
her shirt.
Paulus then said Maloney panicked and strangled Sandy,
putting his knee in her back as she lay on the couch.
The medical examiner bolstered Paulus' case, concluding
that Sandy probably had been strangled, and saying that
he had found trauma to her neck.
Paulus said that after discarding the bloody shirt in a
hamper in the basement, Maloney set the couch on fire to
hide his crime – leaving behind half-smoked cigarettes
to make it look like an accident.
However, the most damning evidence came from the Lady
Luck Hotel in Las Vegas. Five months after Sandy's
death, Maloney had flown there for a weekend with
girlfriend, Tracy Hellenbrand.
"I don’t even know why I even went out there," recalls
Maloney. "I guess that’s one of the foolish things that
people do that think they’re in love."
What Maloney didn't know was that his love had had a
change of heart and that Hellenbrand was now secretly
working with prosecutors, who were still looking for
concrete evidence again Maloney.
The hotel room was wired, and a video camera was hidden
in a clock radio. Cops watched closely from next door.
Hellenbrand's job was to get Maloney to confess. For
hours, she asked him over and over again, "Did you kill
Sandy? Did you?"
But Maloney kept denying he had killed his wife. Then,
finally, he appeared to incriminate himself. He admits
he was at Sandy's house the night she died.
"That videotape showed a man confessing to the crimes
that he committed," says Paulus.
Prosecutors had heard enough. They arrested Maloney that
same day.
But the tape also shows a man with an uncontrollable
temper. "I'm not proud of being that angry," says
Maloney.
A Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 4 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer, was
convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Sandy, in
1999, though he has always maintained his innocence.
(CBS)
The trial lasted eight days. The guilty verdict was read
to a packed courtroom, which included Maloney's young
sons.
"They took us in a back elevator and I just fell on the
floor and started crying my eyes out," Sean recalls. "I
can remember saying, 'What are we gonna do now?'"
Appeals can take years, but then Sheila Berry, who had
never even met Maloney, took up his cause. Berry is a
part-time novelist, part-time investigator, and
part-time head of Truth in Justice, a non-profit group
that tries to help people it feels are wrongly
imprisoned.
After consulting with more than a dozen forensic
experts, Berry is now convinced that Maloney is
innocent, and that Sandy Maloney wasn't murdered. She
believes that there was no crime.
So how did Sandy die? Berry says the explanation is
right there in the evidence - evidence the jury never
saw.
Behind his back, courthouse reporters dubbed Paulus
"Hollywood Joe," for his love of the camera, and for his
dramatic courtroom theatrics.
"He'd get right up there, and he would act things out.
His eyes are very dramatic and he knows how to use
them," says Berry, who worked for Paulus in 1990. "Any
attorney would be happy to have those skills, because
they can skate you across a lot of thin ice."
But thin ice was the last thing Paulus had to worry
about in 1998. Assistant District Attorney Mike Balskus
says Paulus' career was on a fast track: "His goal was
to become one of the U.S. attorneys in Wisconsin. The
Maloney case would probably be a good vehicle for that."
After the guilty verdict, Paulus said: "Ultimately, the
jury paid heed to what I talked to them about in my
closing argument – and that is, we all know what the
truth is here, don't get sidetracked. Just let the truth
flourish so we can get to the right verdict."
Over the next few years, Paulus missed few opportunities
to wax idealistic about truth and justice. But in March
2002, the FBI began investigating Paulus for corruption,
looking into charges that the prosecutor was taking
bribes to fix cases. Soon, the story leaked to the
press, prompting a torrent of righteous indignation.
"I did nothing wrong. There was no impropriety here. All
of this is a big fat lie," says Paulus. "If there is an
investigation out there, at the end of the day,
absolutely nothing will come of it."
News of the FBI inquiry came as no shock to Berry, who’d
had a run-in with Paulus years earlier when he was her
boss. It involved allegations that a star witness had
lied, but Paulus was able to keep the matter quiet, stay
out of trouble and fire Berry.
"Several people in law enforcement urged me to leave the
state," says Berry. "Said, 'He hates you. He is afraid
of you. He is going to set you up on false criminal
charges.' I knew he could do it."
But in April 2004, Paulus' world of influence and power
came tumbling down. He was charged with bribery and
income tax evasion. Within weeks, he had cut a deal,
pleading guilty to accepting $48,000 to fix 22 cases –
six of them criminal. Paulus is now serving a sentence
of more than four years at a federal prison in Florida.
The Paulus bribery investigation covered June 1998
through June 2000 – the very time period when Maloney
was arrested, tried and convicted. Did the corrupt
district attorney act improperly in the Maloney case as
well?
"He had to have known there were big question marks on
whether this was even a murder or a homicide," says
Berry, who adds that despite their history, she has no
ax to grind with Paulus. She just knows the man.
"Here you've got a prosecutor who, on the one hand, is
taking money to fix cases, and they are little cases. So
what does he do to distract attention and pump up this
image he has of being the big crime fighter, the big
justice guy? He goes after high-profile cases. They
attracted him like a moth to a flame."
A Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 5 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
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John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer, was
convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Sandy, in
1999, though he has always maintained his innocence.
(CBS)
In one of two ongoing investigations, Balskus is
collecting boxes of documents, examining more than 100
of Paulus’ past cases.
Balskus says a zeal to "get" Maloney might have led to
manipulating evidence, like the key videotapes used in
Maloney's case. Paulus had sent the hours of tape to a
private, outside company, supposedly to cut them down
for time, not alter the content.
But there was an initial $27,000 editing bill, and a
note from Paulus to the editor saying: "I have replaced
modified or added new excerpts to be included in the
tape." There was also an editor's note that said: "Some
of your clips are so short – one and a half seconds in
duration – that they may seem choppy."
Was there any editing done that could be considered
doctored? "Not from my knowledge," says Paulus'
co-prosecutor Vince Biskupic.
Maloney probably was hurt more by his actions on the
tape than by his words. Still, Balskus wonders to what
lengths Paulus went to win this case.
Does Balskus think that Maloney got a fair trial? "No, I
don't know if John Maloney did it or not," says Balskus.
"But yeah, I think it's pretty clear that not all the
evidence was presented to the jury."
Not only does Berry believe that Maloney did not kill
his wife, she's convinced that Sandy caused her own
death.
She says the evidence was in the basement of the Maloney
house, where police recorded a bizarre scene: two VCRs
on top of a coffee table. And from the ceiling, there
appeared to be a ligature hanging from a conduit pipe,
right down in front of the coffee table.
The autopsy showed that Sandy was very drunk the night
she died. Berry thinks Sandy tried to hang herself with
the electrical cord: "She made a suicide attempt, at
least a gesture, but enough of a gesture to jump off
that coffee table and hit her - back of her head."
Then, as Berry's theory goes, Sandy tried to clean up in
the basement shower. But ultimately, she ended up on the
first floor, where she collapsed into unconsciousness on
the couch while smoking. It was that lit cigarette,
Berry believes, that caused the fire.
"There certainly was a big death wish going on," says
Berry. "She did want to die."
Berry's case was bolstered by what police found
upstairs. "There were quite a few suicide notes found in
the trash on the first floor," says Berry.
Police had labeled these "apparent suicide notes" on the
evidence list and there were five in all. The notes
essentially said: "John, how could you throw everything
away? Take care of the kids. I'm done fighting."
"It was the day before the final divorce hearing. She
had already lost custody of her kids," says Berry. "So I
think she just felt she didn't have anything left."
The jury, however, heard nothing about these notes, and
nothing either about her possible suicide attempt.
Did Paulus intentionally ignore the evidence because it
might favor Maloney? Balskus thinks it's possible: "They
thought John Maloney did it, so they focused on him. The
problem with that is you sort of put blinders on and you
ignore the evidence."
Biscupic, who was on Paulus' prosecution team, says the
suicide theory is a fantasy. But where did the head
wound take place, and why was there no blood upstairs?
"A fire takes place, things happen," says Biscupic.
But Berry says there was no blood upstairs because Sandy
cut her head in the basement, where her blood was found.
State investigators used a chemical spray, Luminol,
which illuminates blood traces even after a clean-up. In
this case, Luminol detected blood in several parts of
the basement, including the bathroom and the shower.
Blood evidence was also found in the laundry room, on
towels, on Sandy's shirt and in another bloody
footprint. "They combed this place looking for any DNA
link, any trace of John Maloney here, and they couldn't
find it," says Berry.
The only basement evidence prosecutors seemed to care
about was Sandy's bloody shirt, which they say Maloney
took downstairs to the laundry, after killing Sandy
upstairs.
But if Sandy wasn't murdered, how did she die? Berry's
experts say it was alcohol poisoning. She drank herself
to death.
A Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 6 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer, was
convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Sandy, in
1999, though he has always maintained his innocence.
(CBS)
As for the fire, Paulus argued at trial that Maloney set
it to cover up his crime. But Berry's arson experts
insist this didn't happen. "There is no question that
the investigation conducted by the state is junk
science," says Berry's expert, James Munger.
The state speculated that Sandy's vodka may have been
used to start the fire, and pointed to the burn pattern
in front of the couch as proof. But Munger, who didn't
buy that theory, set a couch similar to Maloney's on
fire. Almost immediately, the cushions melted, and it's
the melting foam, not any accelerant, that cases the
telltale burn pattern.
"There's absolutely no question in my mind John Maloney
is an innocent man," says Munger.
So why didn't Maloney's own lawyer, prominent Defense
Attorney Gerry Boyle, make these arguments? "To have
gone before a jury and said this was an accident, I
think, would have been malpractice," says Boyle. "And I
would have been sanctioned by an appellate or supreme
court."
Boyle dismissed the apparent suicide notes and the
basement evidence, and instead came up with a third
explanation: Sandy was murdered by Maloney's girlfriend,
Tracy Hellenbrand, the same woman who set him up in a
Las Vegas hotel room.
"Tracy Hellenbrand is an indefatigable liar and she is a
killer," says Boyle.
But Maloney remembers things quite differently. He says
he told Boyle "numerous times" that he believed Sandy's
death was an accident. So why didn't he fire Boyle? "I
didn't have another $100,000 to pull out of mid-air to
pay another attorney," says Maloney.
In a report rejecting a complaint the Maloney family
filed against Boyle, Wisconsin state officials called
Boyle's defense strategy "reasonable."
So, the defense attorney in this case ended up battling
his own client. And the prosecutor ended up going to
prison, which left behind one more bizarre twist.
"One of the last acts that Joe Paulus did as district
attorney was try to get that file out of the district
attorney's office," says Balskus. "He ordered someone to
basically get rid of the file."
Balskus says the file was transferred from office to
office, and most of it has never been found: "We have
very little of the original file. It'd probably be
impossible to try him again."
But all of this controversy ironically has given Maloney
another chance.
"You do what you have to do to get along and survive,"
says Maloney, who is now working as a prison custodian.
It's a menial job, and it pays only about a quarter an
hour. But he says it keeps him from dwelling on the
days, months and now years he's been away from his three
sons.
After the Paulus corruption scandal, and amid questions
raised by investigators like Berry and local reporters,
the state ordered a review of Maloney's case. For a
year, the investigation was conducted by respected
attorney Stephen Meyer, who was about to release his
conclusions on the Internet.
Maloney's two youngest sons and other relatives wait for
news at Maloney's sister, Ginny's, house. When it
finally appeared, it was 23 pages long.
At a news conference later that morning, Meyer said:
"Sandy Maloney was manually strangled. There is no
question in my mind. You can't get away from that.
That's the bottom line, here."
This was a direct contradiction of Berry's theory, and
devastating news for the family. "It's unbelievable that
this could have happened," says Maloney's sister, Ginny.
Meyer emphasized that he wasn't charged with deciding
whether Maloney was guilty or innocent, but only with
determining if this death was an accident or a murder.
And on that score, he said, 79 autopsy pictures, which
Berry’s experts didn’t have, led him to only one
conclusion.
"It wasn't an accident. And I think the sooner everybody
puts that to rest, the better this case will proceed,"
says Meyer.
Only manual strangulation, says Meyer, could have caused
the deep injuries to her neck. They could not have been
caused by a flimsy electrical cord fashioned into a
noose.
A Question Of Murder
Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?
(Page 7 of 7)GREEN BAY, Wis. July 29, 2006
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John Maloney, a Green Bay, Wis. police officer, was
convicted of murdering his estranged wife, Sandy, in
1999, though he has always maintained his innocence.
(CBS)
Berry, however, is unmoved by Meyer’s findings, saying
he made a big mistake by not having an outside medical
expert review the autopsy pictures.
But the report certainly won't help Maloney's case,
should he ever get a new trial. Still, Berry and the
Maloney family remain convinced that there has been a
major injustice.
"I just can't believe that something so wrong can happen
over and over again," says Maloney's son, Sean, who then
read their family's statement: "The Maloney family is
not giving up on my dad. We love him and we know the
truth. I believe in my dad. And I will fight until he is
by my side."
"If there's any way I thought my dad killed my mom, I
would have nothing to do with this case right now," adds
Maloney's son, Matt. "I would not see my dad. I wouldn't
talk to him at all. It's our mom that died. Why would we
cover up for that?"
For Maloney, his sons are his biggest champions. "Yes
they are. ...And I'm very proud of all of them.
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For both John Maloney and former prosecutor Joe Paulus,
much has happened in the year and a half since we first
broadcast this remarkable story.
State officials just last week filed new misconduct
charges against Paulus, for which he is expected to
serve two more years in prison.
In the interest of justice, the Wisconsin Supreme Court
invited John Maloney's lawyers to present new arguments
concerning Paulus'conduct and questions raised by the
original 48 Hours broadcast: was the fire an accident?
"In this case there is a real issue as to cause of death
and whether or not there was an arson," says Maloney's
attorney for the Supreme Court appeal, Lew Wasserman.
And, did the editing of the police tapes distort the
truth?
"The cameras aren't here because John Maloney is in
jail. They’re here because the special prosecutor is in
jail because he corrupted the judicial system at the
same time he was prosecuting John Maloney," Wasserman
says.
But in the end those arguments weren't persuasive
enough. This year, on the eighth anniversary of his
wife's death, the court denied Maloney a new trial,
ruling that he had failed to present sufficient
evidence.
John Maloney vows he will never give up.
Maloney can appeal again if his team uncovers new
evidence of misconduct regarding Paulus' prosecution of
the case. John Maloney will not be eligible for parole
until 2024.
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