Our Readers Respond...

Dear Editor:

Amazing how when you’re a Mother you can’t wait for your child to take their first steps or to say Mama, etc. Unfortunately, what my Mom received was a knock at the door telling her that her son was at the hospital.

March 28, 1998 multiple gunshots rang out at a nearby Amoco gas station on the corner of Ashburton and Nepperhan Aves. in Yonkers. There, upon the ground lay a young black 24-year-old male, Patris Derville.
No parent, especially a Mother, should ever have to be left to bury their child. And I had to watch, as my Mom (Sharon), was basically put through that. Pretty much, with the look upon her face, when it was all said and done, she had to feel as if she’d been put through 2 funerals, one to bury her son and the other the murder trial. She deserves an apology.

How so, you would be asking yourself? First of all how, do you have a murder trial and not present crime scene photos (no one questioned this), even though photos were taken. Instead, the prosecuting D.A. (George Bolen) instead decided to be creative and draw on a large white posterboard with a red and black markers. Ah, don’t you just love our justice system? The D.A. showed the jury only one autopsy photo, a head shot, so they never had any real idea how much damage those 6 bullets had caused at close range.

Such a sloppy job! They all were down from the Yonkers Detective Division, all the way to the Westchester County D.A.’s Office. They all had no qualms about lying because for 8 months they had my Mother believing that her son (Patris) had died at Yonkers General when in fact he was D.O.A (dead on arrival). And, once she had obtained his death certificate, it stated as much.

There were never any apologies made, from either side, for the time when they told us that the suspect had been apprehended, and then we fi-nally found out about 5 months later, that they didn’t have anyone. Guess what?
They left me to be the bearer of the bad news, to tell my family. Never once did they bother to take it upon themselves to get in their County assigned cars and do it.

The jury was never informed that there were no fingerprints found on the shell casings which evidently showed some type of premeditated intentions. Instead of the crap that the jury was fed from someone from the warrant squad, that the gun was carried for protection.

Although the Westchester office of the F.B.I Fugitive Task Force were the ones to seek out and apprehend, no one from that unit was informed about the trial. Therefore, they weren’t there to give the jury much needed info about all they went through to capture the fugitive at large. Am I angry? Hell yes, but with good reason as I’m certain most, if not all, of you can see.

I was trying to obtain a much-deserved apology from the system for my Mom because there was far from any justice found. For those of you that did put forth your best efforts at the time. You all know who you are. My family’s biggest “THANK YOU” goes out to you. But as for the ones that allowed for the mess up, so-called mix-up, etc., and most of all Jeanine Pirro - shame, shame, for you brought my Mother heartache and pain.

In Our Opinion...

At this moment, barely two weeks before Election Day, the most important document to have to been exposed in the race for Attorney General, was clearly former Mayor John Spencer’s 2003 official letter to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, entitled Investigation Needed In Westchester County. The fourteen-page virtual indictment, primarily of then-District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, was, in fact, the result of an informal conversation Spencer and Spitzer had had, in which Spitzer instructed the Mayor to submit a formal complaint for his consideration.

Spencer took that suggestion seriously, and requested his Corporate Counsel to draft the detailed, eight-section,
letter now at the center of the contest for Spitzer’s Office. What, of course, is remarkable about the document, other than its candid, bold, exposure of the workings of the cabal in control of the politics of, and election outcomes in, Westchester for many years, is the source from which it comes, John Spencer, himself a major player, in a position to know. Spencer’s principal target was DA Jeanine Pirro, who unlike all the others exposed - Andy Spano, Larry Schwartz, Nick Spano, Zehy Jereis, Anthony Mangone, Reggie LaFayette, Michael Spano, Al Pirro, Leonard Spano, Larry Horowitz, David Hebert, and many others - alone had the power to determine who would be prosecuted, and who would not.

Quite simply, Spencer accurately perceived the schematic of the cabal, a wheel-like configuration with DA Pirro at its center. He understood, from years of personal experience, the singular significance of their control of the electoral process, by manipulation, and disenfranchisement of voters. He boldly declared, “The Board of Elections is nothing more than an extension of the two major political parties, which parties control much of the electoral apparatus at taxpayer expense.”

Spencer totally unveiled the criminality and hypocrisy embedded in the Dennis Wedra prosecution, and trial, in February 2002, where Pirro surgically attempted to satisfy her personal vendetta against a Yonkers Democratic political operative by granting immunity from prosecution to the very individuals, Anthony Mangone, and Philip Werbel, who were guilty of the crimes for which she was charging Wedra, in exchange for their testimony as Prosecution witnesses, all the while avoiding the very mention of the intended beneficiary of the election fraud, Nicholas Spano.

The most obvious political significance of Spencer’s letter, from the standpoint of Andrew Cuomo, Democratic candidate for Attorney General, is the remarkable fact it was authored by the current Republican candidate for United States Senate. There is no way that Jeanine Pirro can reasonably suggest that it is the product
of a “witch hunt,” or something devised by her opponent.

One can only ascribe the highest motives to then-Mayor John Spencer, and, perhaps conclude that, for whatever reason in 2003, he somehow “got religion,” particularly given his call upon both the State Attorney General, and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, to come into Westchester and investigate his
allegations. Whatever the case, Spencer’s actions, three years ago, may yet turn out to be the single most important instrument in bringing about the downfall of corruption in Westchester County.