She missed her husband dearly, even painfully, still, and had not really accepted his death. Perhaps when those responsible for his murder were put away for good, then she could begin to move on.
A second mother followed the first. Carmen Malco had avoided the trial so far and had no desire to make an appearance. But Joshua Burch had convinced her that she was the only person who might be able to save her son’s life.
She was not. In spite of her emotional plea to the jurors, they deliberated again for less than an hour and returned with a verdict of death.
Part
Four
The
Row
Chapter 51
January of 1979 began slow but ended with some excitement. On the seventeenth, Ainsley Rudy gave birth to child number two, another girl, and the proud parents went to the book of baby names and selected one with no family connections whatsoever. Little Colette Rudy weighed in at five pounds, one ounce, and came almost a month early, but she was healthy and had the lungs to prove it. When Agnes finally got her hands on the child the parents were not sure they would get her back.
On January 20, the attorney general’s office notified Keith that Hugh Malco’s lawyers had completed the filing of his direct appeal to the state supreme court. It was the first step in an appellate process that would take years.
Joshua Burch considered himself a pure courtroom lawyer and had no interest in appellate work. He and Hugh parted ways after the trial, by mutual consent. As much as Burch loved the spotlight, he was fed up with the Malcos and wanted to pursue bigger fees in civil litigation. He referred Hugh to a death penalty firm out of Atlanta and washed his hands of his client. Burch and his staff knew there was little to argue on appeal. The case had tried “cleanly,” as they say in the trade, and Judge Roach had been spot-on with his rulings.
By state law, death penalty cases were handled by the Criminal Appeals Division of the attorney general’s office in Jackson. A week after the guilty verdict in Hattiesburg, Keith happily boxed up his Malco files and sent them to the AG. As long as he was the DA, he would remain in the loop and be kept abreast of all developments. He would not, however, be required to （1） plow through the 5,000-page trial transcript looking for issues, or （2） write thick briefs in response to whatever Hugh’s appellate lawyers cooked up, or （3） participate in oral arguments before the state supreme court two years down the road.
For the moment, Malco was off his desk and out of his office, and he could concentrate on more pressing matters. On January 31, he filed papers with the circuit court clerk and announced he would seek election for his first full, four-year term. He was thirty years old, the youngest DA in the state, and arguably the best known. The tragedy of his father’s sensational death and the spectacle of Hugh’s trial had kept the family name in the headlines.
After the trial, he’d been generous with his time and sat through many interviews. He was coy about his plans, but it wasn’t long before he was being asked about his political ambitions.
He was not expecting opposition in his race for DA, and as the weeks passed there was no hint of any. His grand jury met in March and returned a pile of indictments, the usual assortment of drug possessions, car thefts, home burglaries, domestic dust-ups, aggravated assaults, and petty embezzlements. Two rape cases looked legit and serious.
Not for the first time, Keith asked himself how long he would be content prosecuting small-time criminals and sending them to prison where they served three years before getting out, only to break the law again. He had seen the packed courtrooms and felt the near-suffocating pressure of big league litigation, and he missed it. But he plodded on, doing the job he was elected to do and enjoying the life of a young father.
He kept an eye on the Strip and folks were behaving, for the most part. The state police sent in spies from time to time to appraise the activities. There was no visible gambling. There were plenty of naked girls dancing on stages and such, but it was impossible to know what happened upstairs. Informants assured Keith and the police that the prostitutes had left the Coast and the gamblers had fled to Vegas.