'Crazy Joe' is guilty, must die, Chiles says
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The protracted, 20-year trek to Old Sparky was sidetracked two months ago when the main wit-ness in the case recanted his testi-mony. Chiles ordered investiga-tors to look anew at the murder of Laura Harberts, an 18-year-old Orlando hospital clerk whose skeleton was found in a rural dump.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents interviewed the witness – who said he lied when he testified that Spaziano had shown him the woman’s remains – and at least eight oth-ers who did not testify in the trail but not say they have knowledge in the case.
Their names may never be released; all were promised ano-nymity by investigators.
“This exhaustive review removes any doubt in my mind about this case,” Chiles said. He is the third Florida governor to sign a death warrant in the case.
“I can honestly say they’re put-ting him to death through lies,” said Tony Dilisio, the witness whose original testimony tied Spaziano to Harbert’s body.
“What I said back then was all made up, fabricated.”
FDLE investigators told the governor:
- New witness – including former motorcycle gang mem-bers and inmate who shared a cell with Spaziano – say Spa-ziano bragged of killing Harberts.
- Chicago police believe that Spaziano killed a fellow Outlaw and his wife after he had told them about the murder while drunk.
- An unidentified man told agents that he saw Spaziano and another man hauling something “the same shape and size of a human body wrapped in fabric” into a wooded area about the time of the Harberts disappear-ance.
- Before the trail, Dilisio told people other than the police about Spaziano showing him the
(PLEASE SEE ‘CRAZY JOE’, 16A)
[Additional title on second page]: Recanted testimony fails to changed governor’s mind
He signs new death warrant for ‘Crazy Joe’
(‘CRAZY JOE’, FROM 1A)
bodies.
Dilisio said Thursday that he remembers telling many of his friends when he was a teenager about Spaziano and seeing bodies.
“But it was all lies. It made me feel cool,” Dilisio said. “I remember bragging. It made me feel important. The more I told the story, the more believable it got.”
Teen volunteers information
Harberts disappear Aug. 5, 1973. Her remains were found there weeks later in an Altamonte Springs dump, lying atop another skelton that was never ideti-fied.
The case went unsolved – the medical examiner was never able to even determine a cause of death – until Tony Dilisio, then a 16-year-old drug user in juve-nile detention center, told police he had heard Spaziano brag about the slaying.
His recollections were vague so police hypnotized him to get details.
Spaziano was a biker he admired, Dilisio told them. One day, after drinking beer and tak-ing some LSD, he was taken to the dump by Spaziano, who dis-played two mutilated bodies.
Dilisio was a powerful witness in the case. The prosecutor in the case, Claude Van Hook, has said that Dilisio was not only the state’s “pathologist in this case,” but that also, without him, “we wouldn’t have case.”
Spaziano was convicted and the jury recommend life in prison. The judge instead sen-tenced Spaziano to death, citing the brutality of the crime from Dilisio’s account.
Witness recants
But two months ago, Dilisio told The Herald that his testi-mony at Spaziano’s 1976 murder trial was untrue. He said police coerced him to make the false statements. The promised to spring him from detention and drop breaking and entering charges if he cooperated.
He said Spaziano never took him to the dump, and never bragged about murdering the women. It was the police, he said that took him there, to jog his memory.
“I never saw any bodies,” Dili-sio repeated Thursday. “It just didn’t happen.”
The FDLE interviewed Dilisio June 13. He told him he was eager to please the police back then and told them what he thought they wanted to hear.
In their report, FDLE investi-gators called Dilisio’s recantation was rambling and contradictory.
Report is secret
Mike Mello, Spaziano’s attor-ney, said he is trying to get the report, he names of the wit-nesses and investigator’s notes from the state.
“The reason they don’t want me to see the identity of these super secret witnesses is they have something to hide,” Mello said.
Mello said without the names, he has no way of questioning the people accusing Spaziano of murder. He also said Chiles and the FDLE are discounting Dili-sio’s recantation because what he is saying today is “inconvenient for the state.”
Dilisio has offered to take a lie detector test but FDLE investiga-tors haven’t replied.
“I guess they don’t want to hear what I have to say.
I doesn’t fit in with their story,” Dilisio said.
Chiles said Spaziano has had enough chances.
“Joseph Spaziano has received due process,” Chilies said, “and justice demands that he now face the consequences for the crimes he has committed.”
[Pull Quote]: ‘Joseph Spaziano has received due process, and justice demands that he now face the consequence for the crimes he has committed.” GOV. LAWTON CHILES
[Pull Quote]: ‘But it was all lies. It made me feel cool. I remember bragging. It made me feel important. The more I told the story, the more believable it got.” TONY DILISIO, witness who recanted testimony against Spaziano
[Photograph; Photograph Caption]: MULTIPLE APPEALS REJECTED: Joseph Spaziano
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