Not Bev­er­ly Hills

Right after we moved to Los Ange­les in the sum­mer of 1975, my wife seemed tired all the time. Cindy told me what she thought was wrong. I sat in the lob­by while the doc­tor exam­ined her. When she came out of his office, she was smil­ing. “I’m preg­nant,” she said.

We’d arranged to have lunch that day with the Lath­am lawyer who gave me my job offer. As I drove from Bev­er­ly Hills toward the restau­rant in down­town Los Ange­les, the prospect of hav­ing a child occu­pied my thoughts. Cindy was dis­tract­ed, too, I guess, because we rode along in silence.

“Where are we?” Cindy said, after a long time.

I looked around. Graf­fi­ti-cov­ered build­ings and a chain-link fence topped with rolled barbed wire lined one side of the street; ram­shackle hous­es with board­ed up doors and win­dows on the oth­er.

“We’re not in Bev­er­ly Hills,” I said in a hol­low voice.

I’d appar­ent­ly dri­ven through down­town into a bombed-out neigh­bor­hood. It didn’t look safe, but we were in no dan­ger of attract­ing the atten­tion of bad guys. Our mus­tard-col­ored Pin­to sta­tion wag­on hadn’t been washed since Vir­ginia; the stench of cat urine assault­ed any­one with­in ten feet of it; and its front end bore the imprint of a tele­phone pole. Our sporty ride fit right in.

I found my way back to the restau­rant. We met our friend and told him the news. When he toast­ed us, I dropped a glass of ice water in my lap.

“You seem stressed,” he said, grin­ning.

I grew more rat­tled as my role as a prospec­tive dad took shape. Back in 1953, when my moth­er went into labor, Dad drove her to the hos­pi­tal, dropped her off, and came home. About 3 a.m. the phone rang. “Yeah . . . Great . . . Thanks.” Dad told me I had a baby broth­er, and we went back to bed.

Cedars Sinai 1975

Mom said she didn’t remem­ber any­thing about the birth. “They wheeled me into a room and put me to sleep. When I woke up, they hand­ed me a baby boy.”

Times had changed by 1975. Dads didn’t go home and wait for a call. They were expect­ed to be present in the labor and deliv­ery rooms. This didn’t seem like a great idea to me. At Cedars Sinai, the hos­pi­tal where our child would be born, a dad faint­ed in the deliv­ery room, gash­ing his head on the cor­ner of a steel cart and knock­ing him­self uncon­scious.

“Maybe we should plan for me to stay in the wait­ing room,” I sug­gest­ed to Cindy.

“I want you with me at the birth,” she said.

“Right,” I said.

The deal for moms had changed, too. No more knock-out drugs. Moms remained ful­ly con­scious dur­ing deliv­ery, and a grow­ing move­ment advo­cat­ed nat­ur­al child­birth with­out any med­ica­tion, which was sup­posed to be bet­ter for the baby.

Cindy want­ed a nat­ur­al child­birth. Car­ol Bur­nett once said you could sim­u­late the pain of labor by grab­bing your low­er lip and pulling it over the top of your head.

LaMaze Class

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Right,” I said.

We enrolled in La Maze class­es. The goal of the La Maze tech­nique is to block the pain of child­birth through relax­ation strate­gies and self-dis­ci­pline.

The Focal Point

We went to class­es every week. The instruc­tor said Cindy should stare at a focal point dur­ing a con­trac­tion and breathe through her mouth in short rhyth­mic bursts, mak­ing a lit­tle squeak­ing sound, “hee . . . hee . . . hee.” My job was to be her coach. I would set up the small stained glass medal­lion she chose for her focal point and breathe with her to help her con­cen­trate.

It sound­ed like hocus-pocus non­sense to me, but it seemed to work. In the class­es, the instruc­tor told me to grab Cindy’s leg just above the ankle and apply pres­sure while she stared at the focal point and breathed the lit­tle hee hee’s. Each week I tight­ened my grip. By Decem­ber, she could take all the pres­sure I could inflict with­out flinch­ing.

Strik­ing Dr. Going Nuts

As we approached the due date of mid-Jan­u­ary, 1976, I began to think every­thing might go well. Then the doc­tors in Cal­i­for­nia went nuts. To protest astro­nom­i­cal mal­prac­tice insur­ance pre­mi­ums, they called a state-wide one month strike begin­ning Jan­u­ary 1. We called our doc­tor in a pan­ic. He was on strike, but he told us Cedars Sinai would main­tain an insur­ance-cov­ered Ob/Gyn on duty through­out the month to deliv­er babies. We were wor­ried, but there was noth­ing we could do.

The night of Jan­u­ary 17, Cindy said it was time. Mirac­u­lous­ly, I drove her to the hos­pi­tal with­out get­ting lost. A nurse exam­ined her at 11:00 p.m. She was dilat­ed three cen­time­ters. I set up the medal­lion, and Cindy began the breath­ing reg­i­men.

Nurs­es exam­ined her through­out the night. The results were always the same. No progress. At 8:30 a.m. she was still dilat­ed only three cen­time­ters. I was exhaust­ed and hyper­ven­ti­lat­ed from coach­ing the hee hee’s, but Cindy seemed steady and deter­mined.

The con­trac­tions got stronger short­ly before nine. A cou­ple of real­ly big ones rolled through at the top of the hour. Then came an earth­quake-sized mega-con­trac­tion. Cindy closed her eyes and grabbed the bed with her fists, fight­ing the pain. Sud­den­ly, her water broke. Spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Shoot­ing through the sheets to splash against the wall at the foot of the bed.

I ran for the nurse. “Ten cen­time­ters!” she said, smil­ing ear to ear.

The deliv­ery team wheeled Cindy down the hall so fast I had to run to keep up. We banged through big dou­ble-doors into blind­ing flu­o­res­cent light and gleam­ing stain­less steel.

Amaz­ing­ly, anoth­er woman was in the midst of child­birth at that very moment, and Cedars Sinai’s only cov­ered Ob/Gyn was ful­ly occu­pied with her!

Hero­ical­ly, our doc­tor, who was wait­ing in the deliv­ery room to watch over the birth, stepped up and saved the day. With no insur­ance cov­er­age and know­ing I was a lawyer, he took his place between the stir­rups, his brown eyes smil­ing reas­sur­ing­ly above his sur­gi­cal mask.

I stood on the oth­er end of the table at Cindy’s head and held her hands.

“Push,” the nurse said. Cindy squeezed my hands and pushed.

In a mir­ror perched above the table, I saw the baby’s head crown.

Our doc­tor cupped his hands. Relaxed, calm, in love with his job, he was hum­ming the song, If I Were a Rich Man.

“One more big push,” the nurse said.

Despite her low­er lip being pulled well over her head long before then, Cindy hadn’t screamed once up to that point. She clenched my hands and pushed with all her strength and groaned/screamed from way down deep inside.

In the mir­ror, I saw our child slide out of the birth canal into our doctor’s gen­tle grasp.

“You have a son,” he said.

Tears stream­ing into my mask, I kissed Cindy’s fore­head, so proud of her.

They cleaned up our baby and Cindy held him in her arms. I’ll nev­er for­get her smile.

Lat­er, they placed him in a warm­ing tray. I stood beside it and looked down at him. He stuck his left foot up in the air and made lit­tle cir­cles with it.

I was for­ev­er changed in that moment. I still was, and would always be, the child of my par­ents, but that morn­ing I became much more. I became a father.

Post Script: I stood beside Cindy in the deliv­ery room twice more. Each birth was mag­i­cal.

A gen­er­a­tion lat­er, I got lost on the way to the hos­pi­tal in the mid­dle of the night, but I man­aged to find the place just before Cindy and I became Granny and Papaw.

Here’s John­ny!

My wife was the dri­ving force behind my deci­sion to become a lawyer, but John­ny Car­son actu­al­ly clinched the deal. My wife and I were school teach­ers at the time. We thought we couldn’t sup­port a fam­i­ly on our salaries, so we looked around for alter­na­tives.

“Why don’t you go to law school?” she said.

“Too much tedious detail, por­ing over com­pli­cat­ed doc­u­ments, wrestling with bor­ing rules and reg­u­la­tions.”     

“I bet you’d like it.”

“I don’t think so.”

Over the next few months, she sug­gest­ed law school again and again. I brushed her off each time with­out telling her the real rea­son. I thought I wasn’t smart enough. My G.P.A in col­lege was a lack­lus­ter B-/C+. I didn’t think I could sur­vive a law school cur­ricu­lum, but my wife believed I could do it and I’d learned to trust her judg­ment.   

Melvin Bel­li

Her gen­tle prod­ding had almost over­come my lack of con­fi­dence by the time John­ny Car­son got into the act. I was watch­ing The Tonight Show when he intro­duced F. Lee Bai­ley, Richard “Race­horse” Haynes, and Melvin Bel­li as the best lawyers in the coun­try. They sparred with one anoth­er. Bai­ley was impres­sive, but the oth­er two came across as com­plete duds. Years lat­er I learned they were both great lawyers, but that night Race­horse was slow­er than a crip­pled mule and old Mel was almost comatose. If those two guys could rise to the top of the legal pro­fes­sion, I thought I’d be able to scratch out a mod­est liv­ing at it.

Richard “Race­horse” Haynes

UVA’s law school, one of the best in the nation, was right down the road, but I fig­ured my G.P.A. would dis­qual­i­fy me. My wife’s friend worked for the Dean of Admis­sions. She said the law school was required to take half its stu­dents from Vir­ginia res­i­dents and the appli­cant pool for that group was thin. She thought I would make the cut.

I applied. UVA turned me down. They put me on a wait­ing list, but the call nev­er came. Our friend thought I should try again. “Com­ing off this year’s wait­ing list,” she said, “they’ll give you pri­or­i­ty.” I took her advice, taught for anoth­er year, and reap­plied. As she pre­dict­ed, UVA accept­ed me.

We pen­ciled out a bud­get. My wife’s salary and the small amount we had saved up would cov­er tuition and liv­ing expens­es if we pinched pen­nies. That sum­mer, to cut costs, we moved from our house in Crozet to an effi­cien­cy apart­ment in Char­lottesville.

Clark Hall, home of the UVA Law School in 1972

At law school ori­en­ta­tion in the fall, every­one I met was an Ivy League School Phi Beta Kap­pa, a vet­er­an who had served as an offi­cer in Viet­nam, or an M.B.A. grad­u­ate. I had been reject­ed on my first try for admis­sion, and I seemed to be the least qual­i­fied stu­dent in the incom­ing class. I fig­ured I stood a good chance of flunk­ing out even if I gave it every­thing I had.

Abject fear proved to be a great moti­va­tor. My wife dropped me off at the law school every morn­ing at eight and picked me up at five. I sat in the back of my class­es, kept my mouth shut, and took copi­ous notes. The rest of the day, I stud­ied in the library. At night, I manned the desk in our bed­room until eleven.

Clark Hall Library

One three-hour exam at the end of the semes­ter deter­mined the entire grade for each course. Five exams would decide whether I would sink or swim.

In Jan­u­ary, the results of the exams were post­ed on bul­letin boards, social secu­ri­ty num­bers on the left of the page, grades on the right. I was a dead man walk­ing when I approached the first board. My eyes ran across the page from my num­ber to the grade. I froze. It had to be a mis­take. The grades post­ed on each suc­ces­sive board pro­voked the same reac­tion: This could not be hap­pen­ing.    

I sat my wife down and broke the news to her. “We’re going to be okay,” I said. When I told her my grades, she jumped up and down and cheered.   

The fol­low­ing semes­ters went just as well. Doors opened that we nev­er dreamed we could walk through. Law firms recruit­ed us lav­ish­ly. On our first inter­view­ing trip, a firm put us up in a fan­cy hotel in Atlanta. Glass ele­va­tors zipped up and down a col­umn inside the sky­scraper. We rode to the top, stared wide-eyed at the lob­by way below us, then rode down, and up and down again, like kids in a roller coast­er park.

Those heady days passed quick­ly; grad­u­a­tion approached; and we had to decide what to do with our lives. In almost every firm I’d inter­viewed I’d met a weak link, and I used the Racehorse/old Mel ratio­nale to reas­sure myself: “If that lawyer can suc­ceed here, I can too.”

ARCO Plaza, home of Lath­am in 1975

Lath­am & Watkins in Los Ange­les was the sole excep­tion. I’d met thir­ty attor­neys. They were all great lawyers. No weak links.

I lev­eled with my wife. “I don’t know if I’m good enough to make it there.” The rea­sons not to accept Latham’s offer were daunt­ing: Nei­ther of us had been west of the Rock­ies until we inter­viewed Lath­am. Los Ange­les was 3000 miles away from our fam­i­lies and every­one and every­thing we knew. We’d spent only six days in the city, not enough time to know if we’d like liv­ing there. And I might fail.

On the oth­er side of the ledger stood a sin­gle, stark fact: I was con­vinced Lath­am was the best law firm in the coun­try.

I was fifty-fifty on the deci­sion. My wife tipped the bal­ance.

View from Afton Moun­tain

After grad­u­a­tion, we wres­tled our five cats into a cage, loaded it into our Pin­to sta­tion wag­on, and set out for Los Ange­les. At the top of Afton Moun­tain, we stopped and looked back at the val­ley, not know­ing if we’d ever return to this place we had loved so much. And we cried.

Six days lat­er, we arrived in Los Ange­les. After a week of argu­ing with land­lords about our cats, I did what I had to do. I com­mit­ted fraud. I signed a No-Pets lease and we smug­gled the cats into an apart­ment on Gret­na Green Way in San­ta Mon­i­ca, three doors down from the court­yard where O. J. Simp­son would slash Nicole’s throat and stab Ron Hart­man to death nine­teen years lat­er.

I went to work at Lath­am in June. In July, I took the Cal­i­for­nia Bar Exam, the most dif­fi­cult bar in the coun­try with a fail­ure rate of fifty per­cent. At that time, no attor­ney at Lath­am had ever failed it, and I assumed they would fire me if I washed out.

I entered an audi­to­ri­um the morn­ing of the exam ner­vous and over­wrought and left three days lat­er, feel­ing no bet­ter.

While we wait­ed anx­ious­ly for the results, a para­le­gal who worked at Lath­am told me he’d failed the bar exam eight times. At a cof­fee shop, I met a Har­vard Law School grad­u­ate who’d failed it twice. As the months dragged on, I met a small army of impres­sive grad­u­ates from good law schools who had failed the exam once or more.

2018 Cal­i­for­nia Bar Exam vic­tims, 60% failed

I was on the verge of a ner­vous break­down when the bar final­ly released the results to the press in Decem­ber. My hands shook when I paid the old guy at the news­stand.  I swal­lowed hard and found the page with the O’s on it.

Back at the apart­ment, I showed my wife the news­pa­per. She cheered again, but being eight months’ preg­nant, she had the good sense not to jump up and down this time.

I prac­ticed law at Lath­am for eigh­teen years. I did okay, and I liked it a lot.   

John­ny and The Tonight Show gave me the last shove across the line, but my auburn-haired blind date is the one who called the shot and got it right. She knows me bet­ter than I know myself.

Dr. Carl Cop­poli­no

My new book, The Judas Mur­ders, was inspired in part by a dou­ble mur­der case from the 1960’s. Here’s what hap­pened in that case.

Dr. Carl Cop­poli­no, an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, and his wife Carmela, a research physi­cian, lived in an afflu­ent seashore com­mu­ni­ty in New Jer­sey in 1961 when, at the age of 30, Carl had a heart attack. Due to his poor health, he quit his job and began col­lect­ing dis­abil­i­ty pay­ments while Carmela con­tin­ued to work to sup­port their lifestyle.

Colonel William Far­ber and his wife Mar­jorie lived across the street from the Cop­poli­nos. In 1962, while Carmela was preg­nant with Carl’s sec­ond daugh­ter, Carl and Mar­jorie Far­ber plunged into a tor­rid sex­u­al affair.

Col. William Far­ber

On the morn­ing of July 30, 1963, Colonel Far­ber com­plained of chest pains. Carl thought he was hav­ing a heart attack and told him to go to the hos­pi­tal. He refused to go and died that after­noon. Carl con­vinced Carmela to sign the death cer­tifi­cate, list­ing coro­nary throm­bo­sis as the cause of death. There was no autop­sy.

By 1965, Carl had suf­fered three more heart attacks. He and Carmela moved to Sara­so­ta, Flori­da, hop­ing the mild cli­mate would improve his health. Mar­jorie Far­ber also relo­cat­ed and moved into the house next door to them.

Carmela Cop­poli­no

In August, Carmela com­plained of chest pains. Carl awoke on the 28^th to find that she had died in her sleep. He told Carmela’s doc­tor that she had a heart attack, and the doc­tor signed a death cer­tifi­cate indi­cat­ing coro­nary occlu­sion as the cause of death. No autop­sy was per­formed. Carmela was 32 when she died.

Short­ly before her death, Carl had joined a bridge club. His reg­u­lar play­ing part­ner was Mary Gib­son, a wealthy divorcee. He mar­ried her twen­ty-two days after Carmela’s death.

Mar­jorie Far­ber

Carl’s jilt­ed mis­tress, Mar­jorie, was not pleased. She told the police Carl had mur­dered both their spous­es. She said he helped her give Colonel Far­ber an injec­tion of the anes­thet­ic drug suc­cinyl­choline, but the shot didn’t kill him so Carl smoth­ered him with a pil­low. She claimed that Carl killed Carmela with the same drug.

Marjorie’s alle­ga­tions made sense from a med­ical stand­point. Suc­cinyl­choline has benign pur­pos­es. Anes­the­si­ol­o­gists use it to intu­bate patients pri­or to surgery, par­a­lyz­ing the throat so a doc­tor can insert a breath­ing tube pain­less­ly, but mega-dos­es of it are fatal. Vet­eri­nar­i­ans euth­a­nize ani­mals with it, and some states include it in a three-drug, lethal-injec­tion cock­tail to exe­cute cap­i­tal defen­dants.

Most impor­tant­ly for a mur­der­er, suc­cinyl­choline con­verts almost instant­ly after injec­tion into metabo­lites that nor­mal­ly exist in the body. Until the 1990’s, there was no reli­able method for deter­min­ing in an autop­sy that it was the cause of a victim’s death, mak­ing it the per­fect mur­der weapon. As an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, Carl would have known this.

Based on Marjorie’s alle­ga­tions, the courts ordered the exhuma­tions of Colonel Far­ber and Carmela Cop­poli­no. The med­ical exam­in­er found no evi­dence of heart prob­lems in either corpse. Both states indict­ed Carl for mur­der.

Carl with F. Lee Bai­ley

The New Jer­sey tri­al went for­ward in 1966 with F. Lee Bai­ley as Carl’s attor­ney. Farber’s body had been in the ground for more than two years when the autop­sy was per­formed. Its results were ambigu­ous. The med­ical exam­in­er could not find suc­cinyl­choline in the corpse and he couldn’t tes­ti­fy with cer­tain­ty that Far­ber had been smoth­ered. The pros­e­cu­tion depend­ed almost entire­ly on Marjorie’s tes­ti­mo­ny. In a sav­age cross-exam­i­na­tion, Bai­ley por­trayed her as a “woman scorned,” who would say any­thing to take revenge on Carl. After only four hours’ delib­er­a­tion, the jury found Carl not guilty.

The Flori­da tri­al in 1967 about Carmela’s death was a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. The pros­e­cu­tors based the case on objec­tive cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, rather than Marjorie’s tes­ti­mo­ny. A doc­tor tes­ti­fied that he gave Carl six vials of suc­cinyl­choline a few weeks before Carmela’s death because Carl said he need­ed the drug for research, although Carl was not a licensed doc­tor at the time. Carl increased his ben­e­fit under Carmela’s life insur­ance pol­i­cy just before she died. Her med­ical records con­tained no his­to­ry of heart prob­lems. Carmela turned down Carl’s request for a divorce short­ly before her death, and Carl’s bridge club mem­bers said that he moved in with Mary Gib­son the day after Carmela died.

The foren­sic evi­dence was stronger, too. The med­ical exam­in­er spot­ted a punc­ture in Carmela’s but­tocks con­sis­tent with a syringe wound and found abnor­mal lev­els of the metabo­lites deriv­a­tive of suc­cinyl­choline in her organs.

After only six hours’ delib­er­a­tion, the jury found Carl guilty of sec­ond degree mur­der. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the ver­dict made no sense. Poi­son­ing requires pre-med­i­ta­tion and plan­ning, but sec­ond degree mur­der is an inten­tion­al killing that is not pre­med­i­tat­ed. Bai­ley filed vig­or­ous appeals based on that incon­sis­ten­cy and on a host of oth­er legal issues.

Carl & Mary Gib­son dur­ing a break at the tri­al

The appeals were unsuc­cess­ful, but Carl’s wealthy sec­ond wife, Mary, some­how con­vinced a Flori­da leg­is­la­tor over­see­ing the parole board that Carl was inno­cent, and the board released him in 1979 at the age of 47, after serv­ing 12 years.

The next year, Carl pub­lished a book enti­tled The Crime that Nev­er Was. It begins with Carl and Mary mak­ing love in bed in the Buc­ca­neer Motel the morn­ing before the Flori­da jury ren­dered its ver­dict. A three hun­dred page dai­ly diary of Carl’s jail time fol­lows, salt­ed with rants about his vicious per­se­cu­tion.  He claims the med­ical exam­in­er man­u­fac­tured the foren­sic evi­dence against him, Bai­ley com­mit­ted mal­prac­tice, the Flori­da judge and pros­e­cu­tors knew he wasn’t guilty, his jail­ers were sadis­tic, and so on. He doesn’t address the events lead­ing up to the deaths of Colonel Far­ber and Carmela or attempt to explain the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence against him. In The Crime That Nev­er Was, Carl, and not Carmela, is the vic­tim, a mar­tyr burned at the stake of a cor­rupt jus­tice sys­tem.

Carl bar­be­cue­ing at the beach

I don’t think so. Based on the evi­dence adduced at the tri­als, I think he was a nar­cis­sis­tic cold-blood­ed mur­der­er. That evi­dence, cou­pled with the known effects of suc­cinyl­choline on the body, tell us exact­ly how he killed Carmela. He plunged a syringe into her hip while she lay in bed. He held her down while she strug­gled against him for the one to three min­utes it took for the Clydesdale–size dose of suc­cinyl­choline to kick in. Then she lay still, the drug hav­ing par­a­lyzed every mus­cle in her body. For the next three to five min­utes, she was trapped inside a liv­ing corpse, ful­ly con­scious, but immo­bile and help­less, even unable to move her eyes, as her diaphragm froze up and her breath grew short­er and short­er until she couldn’t breathe at all. Through it all, she knew exact­ly what was hap­pen­ing to her, right up to the moment of her death.

Know­ing full well as an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist what the drug was doing to Carmela, Carl stood over her and cold­ly watched the woman he had met and mar­ried in med­ical school, his wife of nine years, and the moth­er of his two daugh­ters die a hor­rif­ic death by his hand.

Post Script: Carl died in 2017 at the age of 84. There was no autop­sy. Too bad. I won­der if a med­ical exam­in­er would have found evi­dence of those five heart attacks Carl claimed to have suf­fered fifty years before he died, back when he was too sick to work but well enough for red-hot sex­u­al liaisons with Mar­jorie and Mary.