Opinion ID: 6927137
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Statement of -Facts

Text: Ramona Grabowski was brutally murdered between 2:30 and 3:00 on the afternoon of December 1,1982. The murder took place in the basement of her residence on Hawthorne Street in northeast Philadelphia. A post mortem examination revealed that Grabow-ski had suffered forty anterior stab wounds to the head, neck, trunk, and extremities, as well as anterior fractures of the skull with incised wounds to the brain, and laceration of her lower lip, both nipples, and the right labia. Her injuries also included cuts or wounds to her forehead, nose, right eyebrow, neck, and chin. Fourteen small wounds distributed over Grabowski’s back were caused by the knife or weapon that had inflicted the wounds on the front of her body completely passing through her. At trial, the Commonwealth’s case-in-chief established that nine-year old Monica Hendricks, Grabowski’s daughter by another marriage, arrived home from school on the date of the murder at about 3:00 p.m. Monica entered the house through the basement and went up the cellar steps to the first floor. There she encountered her younger siblings, Tanya, Rebecca, and Joseph. They were screaming. Monica went back down to the basement. Seeing nothing, she returned to the kitchen. On her way back to the kitchen she looked out a window and saw a green car with stripes down its side and a luggage rack on its roof. Entreated by her younger sisters and brother, Monica returned to the basement where she saw a man walking out of the door. She described him as fat with gray hair, a mustache, blue eyes, no bottom teeth, and bumps on his face. She said that he was wearing a tan jacket and trousers of a darker brown. Monica testified at trial that he mumbled something as he walked out of the basement door. Later she identified McAleese as the man she had seen in the basement. After he left, Monica saw her mother lying in a corner of the basement, stabbed, with clothing stained and in disarray. . Monica ran for help and encountered her school’s crossing guards. She did not at once tell the crossing guards why she needed .help because she wanted to talk to her eleven-year old stepsister, Tara, first. When Tara arrived, Monica talked to her. Tara then told Mary Wijtyszyn, one of the crossing guards, that Monica said her mother had been stabbed. Mary Wijtyszyn and another crossing guard, Harriet Hughes, went with Monica and Tara to their house. Mary Wijtyszyn testified that Monica said the man she saw in the basement was big with missing front teeth and some gray hair. Monica also said that she thought the man was Tanya’s and Rebecca’s father. 4 Later Monica told Mary Wijtyszyn that “the man she had seen was Frank McAleese, Tanya and Rebecca’s father.” App. at 306. At the Grabowski residence, Monica also told Harriet Hughes that McAleese was the man she saw in the basement. • Later, during the evening of December 1, as Detective Roy Gibson of the Philadelphia Police Department was taking Monica to her grandmother’s home, she pointed out a white Ford Fairmount station wagon and, according to Detective Gibson, said that except for its color and the absence of a luggage rack and stripes on the side the car was the same as the one she had seen earlier that day. Then she spotted a car with a luggage rack identical to the one she had seen on the car outside her residence that afternoon and pointed it out. Detective Gibson, accompanied by Detective Bittenbender, located McAleese’s automobile in Delaware parked in a lot next to his apartment. It was a green station wagon with off-white stripes and matched Monica’s description of the car she had seen outside her home that afternoon. 5 A search of McAleese’s apartment produced a knife with a brown wooden handle and metal blade. It was chemically analyzed and tested negative for human blood but positive for beef blood. In addition, a beige shirt and brown trousers were found in the washing machine, still wet, together with other clothes, including those of a child. The shirt and trousers were analyzed. They too tested negative for human blood. Monica testified at trial that the shirt looked like the one worn by the man whom she had identified as McAleese. Edgar Turner, an employee of Bell Telephone Company, testified from his company’s records that a five-minute telephone call was placed from McAleese’s place of business in Wilmington, Delaware to Grabowski’s residence at 1:10 p.m. on the date of the murder. Over the objection of McAleese’s trial counsel, the Commonwealth produced the testimony of witnesses Darleen Wetton and Regina Boyle, both of whom stated that Grabow-ski had told them during telephone conversations on the date of the murder that McAleese planned to visit her that day and bring her some watches to sell. More specifically, Wetton testified that she had a telephone conversation with Grabowski between 1:15 p.m. and 1:45 p.m. on the day of the murder. During that conversation, Gra-bowski told her that Tanya’s father had telephoned her earlier that day. Grabowski referred to the caller as her ex-husband, but did not call him by name. Wetton estimated that Grabowski had approximately four or five ex-husbands, not including A1 Grabowski, the man to whom she was married on the day she died. Boyle testified that she had two “very long” telephone conversations with Grabow-ski on the day of the murder. The first call was at either 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. The second call was “around” 1:00 p.m. Grabow-ski told Boyle that Frank McAleese, her ex-husband, was “coming down to bring her some watches, and he was going to [meet] her at the 7-11” at three o’clock. App. at 248. Boyle said that the telephone conversation lasted until 2:30 p.m. without any significant interruptions. During the conversation, Grabowski never said, “ Wait a minute. I have to go to the door,’ or, ‘Somebody is at the door,’ or anything like that.” Id. at 257. Instead, Boyle testified that at 2:30 p.m. Grabowski “sounded very scary, and she hung up very quickly.” Id. Without testifying himself, McAleese put on a three-pronged defense. He attacked the identification testimony of the sole eyewitness, nine-year old Monica Hendricks. He showed that he was an established businessman, that he was well-known as such among various tradespeople in Delaware, and that he was something of an expert in his field, having published an article in a trade magazine, thus attempting to suggest that he was not the kind of man who would commit such a brutal murder. Finally, McAleese presented a “loose alibi” defense through the testimony of five disinterested witnesses. App. at 1287. Although this defense did not place him beyond the scene of the crime at the time of the murder, it did place him in Delaware at various times between 10:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. and again at 5:45 p.m. on the day of the murder. The defense’s theory was that the loose alibi supported the evidence suggesting McAleese was not the type to commit a brutal murder because a violent murderer would be unlikely to go about his ordinary daily activities just before and after a killing as brutal as the killing of Ramona Grabowski. By this, together with some inconsistencies in Monica’s story and dental records showing McAleese had all his teeth after the crime, the defense hoped to raise in the jury’s mind a reasonable doubt about McAleese’s identity as the killer. Pursuing the loose alibi defense, trial counsel called five disinterested witnesses to the stand to testify about McAleese’s whereabouts on the day of the murder. These witnesses were: —Florence Lincoln, an employee of U.S. Optical in Wilmington, who testified that McAleese had been in the store at 10:03 a.m. on the date of the murder to drop off his daughter’s or stepdaughter’s eyeglasses; —Mary DiGiacomo, who was employed by a hardware supply company and testified that she sold a dog house to McAleese between either 11:00 a.m. and noon or 12:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m.; —Alvin Hall, Jr., then vice-president of General Engineering Supply Company of Wilmington, Delaware, who testified that he had a telephone conversation with McAleese between 10:00 a.m. and noon on December 1, and that McAleese also came to his office that same day between noon and 1:30 p.m.; —Tracy B. Sharp, a counterman at Green-berg Supply, who testified that he remembered McAleese being in the store on December 1 between noon and 1:30 p.m.; and —Dorothy Martinez, custodian of records for a physical therapist in Wilmington, who testified that McAleese kept a 5:45 p.m. appointment on December 1. The loose alibi defense was originally to include the testimony of attorney Natalie, McAleese’s Wilmington lawyer in the unrelated criminal fraud case. Natalie would have testified that he had spoken to McAleese on the telephone shortly before 3:00 p.m. on the day of the crime. 6 Before counsel called Natalie to the stand, he sought a ruling from the trial court that would have restricted cross-examination of Natalie to whether the phone call had in fact occurred. The trial court refused so to limit Natalie’s cross-examination and ruled instead that if Natalie testified, he would be subject. to cross-examination about the substance of his conversation with McAleese. Trial counsel did not challenge this ruling by informing the court that the substance of the conversation involved pending unrelated Delaware criminal charges against McAleese. Ultimately, trial counsel decided not to call Natalie as a witness. 7