Hurricane: The Life of Rubin Carter, Fighter

He was the state’s “mystery witness.”

Bello took the stand with an air of insouciant invincibility, basking in the spotlight of his sudden fame. In his answers to Hull’s questions, he gave his account of the night in question. While waiting for Bradley to break into the warehouse with a tire iron, Bello said he saw a white Dodge driving around the block with three colored men inside. He thought he saw something sticking up between one of their legs that looked like a rifle barrel. Then he decided he wanted a cigarette, so he walked to the Lafayette bar to buy a pack. As he walked toward the tavern, he heard two shots, then two shots more, then he saw two colored fellows walking around the corner, talking loud and laughing. One had a shotgun, the other a pistol. They were fourteen feet away and saw Bello, but Bello ran to safety. So the gunmen drove away in their white car. The two men, Bello said, were Rubin Carter and John Artis.

Bello then walked to the bar and saw the bodies on the floor. He went to the cash register to get a dime to call the police; instead, he stole money from the register. He left the bar, gave the pilfered cash to Bradley, and then returned to the tavern because he feared a witness had seen him leaving the crime scene. He saw Carter and Artis when the police brought them to the bar and later at the police station, but under questioning by police, he did not identify them. Then in October, Bello gave another statement to police, claiming he saw the two defendants fleeing the crime scene. He said he did not identify them on the night of the murders because he feared that doing so would endanger him.

The lies, at least to Carter, were transparent. Why would a man engaged in a surreptitious criminal activity decide to walk to a bar and buy a pack of cigarettes? How could an overweight, high-heeled Bello elude a world-class professional athlete and a former high school track star? Why would testifying now put him in less danger than on the night of the murders? Why would Carter have let the police take him to the bar if he knew somebody had seen him? Shit! Carter thought. I wouldn’t have lost anything by killing the police too—if I had been the killer!

Ray Brown’s cross-examination entangled Bello in a thicket of half-truths and inconsistencies. Even the most innocuous inquiries caught Bello in lies.

“Where were you living in June of 1966?” Brown asked.

“One-thirty-eight Redwood Avenue,” Bello answered.

“Did you tell the police on June 17, 1966, where you lived?” Brown asked.

“Yes.”

“Where did you tell them you lived?”

“It had to be Redwood Avenue,” he said.

“Would you look at this please.” Brown showed him a written statement. “I show you S-40 for identification. Is there a date in the upper left-hand corner?” he asked.

“June 17, 1966,” Bello said.

“Is that your signature?”

“Yes.”

“What does it say with respect to your full name, age, and address?”

“Maple Avenue,” Bello conceded.

“Where did you live in June of 1966?” Brown asked again.

“On Maple Avenue.”

“You lived in Clifton?” Brown asked.

“Yes.”

“You have difficulty recalling where you lived less than a year ago?”

“I’m not very good on dates,” Bello said.

“You’re not very good on memory either, are you,” Brown snapped.

Bello conceded that he had lied to the police on the night of the murders when he said the assailants had chased him up the street; now he claimed the gunmen did not chase him at all—and he also tried to backpedal from his initial description of the men.

“You told, at the very scene, other police officers … that these men were of slim build, five eleven or so, is that correct?” Brown asked.

“I meant to say one was a little taller than the other,” Bello said.

The witness said he could not recall exactly what he had told the police. Brown pulled out Bello’s original police statement on the description of the two gunmen.

“Do you deny telling Officer Unger and Officer Greenough on the morning of the seventeenth of June, 1966, that one man was five eleven and the other was five eleven and that both were slim built? You deny that?”

“I don’t deny anything. If it is there, it must be true.”

Bello then tried to explain more fully what he did after he entered the bar. He did not have a dime to make a telephone call, he said, so he stepped over the bleeding dead body of Jim Oliver to reach the cash register. “I went in there to try to help, and when I went to the cash register to get that dime, basically I am a thief. I will admit that.” With the courtroom in titters, he continued. “I did go to the cash register to get a dime, but when I seen this money, knowing myself, knowing that I am a thief, I did take some money. But I am not an assassin. Remember that.”

With $62 of stolen cash in hand, Bello stepped back over Oliver’s corpse and left the bar.

Bello was grilled on the witness stand for two days, and Ray Brown ended his interrogation with a flourish of indignation.

“When you stole that money from the cash register sitting behind the bar, did you have to pass by Hazel Tanis lying there on the floor begging for help?”

“Yes,” Bello answered.

“And Mr. William Marins slumped on the barstool shot in the head?”

“Yes.”

“And Fred Nauyoks lying dead at the bar?”

“Yes, Mr. Brown.”

“Then you stepped over Jim Oliver lying dead behind the bar to get to the cash register. When did you do all of this, mister?”

“Do what?” Judge Larner intervened.

Brown whipped around and looked at the judge. “Slay the bartender,” he said.

“What!” Judge Larner screamed.

“When did he slay the bartender?” Brown repeated. “That is addressed to him,” pointing to Bello.

“Objection!” shouted the prosecutor.

“Answer that,” the judge told Bello.

“It is not to my knowledge,” the witness said defiantly.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” Brown snarled, stalking away. “Not to his knowledge,” he said derisively as he passed the jury.

Arthur Dexter Bradley, a lanky, red-haired twenty-three-year-old, already had six convictions under his belt by the time of the trial. But unlike Bello, he was locked away in the Morris County Jail, and he had additional charges pending on four armed robberies. He was a poor thief and a worse prisoner: he had tried to escape from jail and failed. He testified that he recognized Carter running down Lafayette Street after the shooting, even though he had only seen Carter once before, two years earlier. Asked by Hull to point out the man he saw running down the street, Bradley pointed to Carter.

“Pointing where,” Judge Larner asked. “Tell us again.”