The Lawrenc.e Via Trial
Akron's "True Crime" Story
By Gabriel Park
Did Larry Joseph Via, aka Via, aka Jody
Coltrane, aka Johnny Cole, get a fair trial?
He must have thought so. After the jury
had been out for two-and-one-half days
in his first-degree murder trial, before the
judge gave them an additional charge
designed to encourage them to reach a
unanimous verdict of either guilt or
acquittal, the assistant prosecutor came to
speak with the hvo attorneys appointed
to Via' s defense.
Charles Lowrey wanted to talk to
Bradford "Buck" Gearinger and Charles
"Charlie" Grisi about a plea bargain. He
offered Via this deal: plead guilty to second-degree murder. The two defense
attorneys went to speak with Via at the
Summit County Jail. They explained to
him that a plea bargain might result in a
prison sentence far less than he faced if
convicted of the first-degree murder
charge. It was possible for him to become
eligible for parole in approximately seven
years. Via turned down the deal. He had
faith that, after the defense case put on by
Gearinger and Grisi, the jury would
acquit him of killing Pennsylvania co-ed
Mary Maguire.
For three weeks in February 1973, four
attorneys battled it out over Via's fate in
Judge James Barbuto's courtroom. The
prosecution team, consisting of Lowrey
and Dennis Bartek, presented a strong
case that accused Via of murdering
Maguire, a 19-year-old college student, in
cold blood. Her half-naked body had
been found face down in the ~oods
behind a rest stop on Route 8 in Boston
Township, bound hand and foot with her
own shoe laces, bearing three .25-caliber
bullet wounds. Two rounds had entered
the back of her head. The third shot had
pierced her heart.
The prosecution lacked a murder
weapon or an eyewitness, but they had
overcome these hurdles to create a web of
expert and fact witness testimony that
told the jury that it was Via's weapon and
Via's deed that had ended the young redhead's life.
There was no problem placing Via at
the rest stop with Ohio University student
Maguire, who was described by one witness as "attractive." Many people had
seen the two together Wednesday, Sept.
20, 1972, usually near Maguire's 1971 VW
van with a distinctive two-toned paint
job. At least five people had reported to
the police that they saw the van parked in
the rest area on or about Sept. 21, 1972.
The problem was that no one saw Via kill
Maguire, and the probable murder
weapon was at the bottom of Lake Erie in
Cleveland near the Ninth Street pier.
The prosecution team's solution was
crea.tive. They successfully moved Judge
Barbuto to admit evidence of Via's "other
acts." Via and his erstwhile girlfriend, a
stripper named Charmaine Bouvar, had
robbed a gas station in Geauga County.
The station attendant, Harvey Hoffman,
was a very lucky man. After being tied
hand and foot by Via and Charmaine,
Hoffman had been shot point blank by
Via with a .25-caliber pistol at the base of
his skull, and lived to testify against Via
in the Maguire murder trial.
Via had been "kind" to Hoffman before
shooting him. He had bound Hoffman in
a manner similar to the method used to
bind Maguire, and then had helped him
sit down on the floor in a room in the back
of the station. Then Hoffman "felt a sharp
pain" in the back of his head and realized
that Via had shot him. Because the round
was embedded in Hoffman's brain, there
was no way to compare it to the three bullets taken from Maguire's body. But shell
casings taken from the Geauga county
scene matched the shell casing recovered
on Maguire's body.
At least according to the FBI. The prosecution made extensive use of forensic
evidence to connect Via with the shell casing found on Maguire's body, and the
rounds recovered from her wounds.
During the trial, they presented two FBI
experts to the jury.
The first FBI expert witness testified
that the sandy blond pubic hair recovered
from Maguire's body matched Via's hair,
taken from him while in police custody.
The second FBI prosecution expert was
crucial. He testified that he examined the
.25 shell casing taken from Maguire's
body and compared it with the shell casing taken from the gas station in Geauga
County. He said the breech block and firing pin signatures of weapons were
unique: when a cartridge discharged in
the firing chamber, it expanded the brass
casing against tiny imperfections and
anomalies in the metal of the weapon's
breech, causing a "breech block signature" t~ be imprinted on the brass casing.
Accordmg to the FBI experts, the casings
from the two crime scenes matched.
Thus the prosecution had established
that Via was with Maguire at the crime
scene, that they in all likelihood had been
lovers and that it was Via's own \veauon
that had inflicted the fatal wound~ t~
Maguire's brain and heart. In addition,
the prosecution presented testimonv from
a woman living in Tamsin Park, a· recreation area close to the rest area where the
body was found. The witness testified
that at approximately 7:30 a.m. on the dav
in question, she had heard three pistol
shots "right outside my window."
The police had conducted an experiment to validate her testimony. Her husband had fired six shots with a .22 pistol
at the crime scene. The witness heard the
distinctive pattern of her husband's firing: three shots, a pause, then three more.
In addition, the prosecution called Via's
girlfriend, the stripper Charmaine
Bouvar. The two had traveled around
together for months in the spring and
summer of 1972, while Charmaine
worked her trade as a stripper in towns
from Ashtabula, Ohio, to Bowling Green,
Kentucky. While in Kentucky, Charmaine
had paid 50 dollars for a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol. Via had taken it from
her, and Charmaine claimed it was the
only weapon she had ever seen Via carry.
This weapon was unavailable to the
prosecution, because as soon as Via was
allowed a telephone call after his arrest,
he telephoned his estranged wife, Sharon
Via, in Cleveland. A police lieutenant
heard him say one sentence to her: "Get
rid of that thing." Two boarders living at
Sharon's residence had, at Sharon's
request, thrown the pistol off the Ninth
Street pier and into the lake. The
Cleveland police had dragged the water
with a magnet to no avail. Diving for the
weapon was impossible, since the site
was far too close to the breakwater.
As a final web in the circumstantial net,
the prosecution put on the testimony of
Maguire's college boyfriend who testified
that a Thai bell on a leather strap used by
50 - 125th Anniversary
.
-
--
-
.
Via as a key chain matched the Thai bell
he had been given by Maguire as a keepsake. Maguire, he said, had loved the bells
and was fond of carrying them and wearing them as jewelry.
It was now up to Via' s defense team to
proceed with its case. Via was lucky in the
lawyers appointed by Judge Barbuto to
defend him. One might also say he had
been unlucky in the prosecution lawyers
who accused him, for they had done a
masterful job. In any event, it was now up
to Gearinger and Grisi to mount the best
defense they could muster, to save Via
from the sentence of life imprisonment
that awaited him upon conviction for
Maguire's first-degree murder.
The Via case was not one local lawyers
were begging to get. No one was particularly fond of the idea of defending the
Mansonesque drifter who seduced or
raped Maguire and then placed three
slugs into her prone and bound body.
Barbuto chose Grisi, who had just left
the Summit Prosecutor's office for private
practice. When Grisi accepted the
appointment, he knew he would need
help. Barbuto then made an odd but apt
choice for Grisi' s co-counsel.
Gearinger was not the prototype criminal defense lawyer. He was employed by
the prestigious law firm of Buckingham,
Doolittle, and Burroughs. An ex-Marine
JAG officer, Gearinger had spent the past
five years doing defense-oriented litigation. At the time he accepted the appointment, he was only the second BDB attorney who had accepted a criminal appointment in the history of the firm.
Both appointed counsel felt strongly
about the rights of accused to representation under our jury system, and both were
intrigued by the challenges of the case.
Neither was excited about the fact that the
case was unpopular, and neither was terribly fond of their client.
Via was a wiseguy. During the trial he
suggested selling locks of his flowing
. sandy hair to interested members of the
· audience in the packed courtroom. Either
during or after the trial he cooperated
with "true crime" magazines in the publication of lurid stories about his case. The
attorneys convinced Via to cut his hair
only after a real battle with the vain
_ defendant, and he would only consent to
have his hair and beard slightly trimmed.
In fact, Grisi and Gearinger nearly
_ asked to be excused from the case. Via
; would not cooperate with them, and they
_ had trouble providing him with an effective defense as a result. The two defense
, lawyers hit upon an unusual strategy to
, avoid such a motion and get on with the
· trial.
They obtained the agreement of the
prosecution to an unusual arrangement:
, they would not give an opening state-
GOLDMAN
&
ROSEN, LTD.
ATTORNEYS
Samuel Goldn1an
Bernard I. Rosen
George P. Tsarnas
Michael B. Hendler
Irving B. Sugerman
. Frank E. Steel
Stacey Tsarnas
Hackenberg
Gary M. Rosen
Karen R. Schneidern1an
Marc P. Gertz
Joseph R. Spoonster
One cascade Plaza - 12th Floor
Akron, OH 44308
Phone: (330) 376-8336 •!· Fax: (330) 376-2522
125th Anniversary - 51
ment until the close of the prosecution's
case. That way they would have more
time and better ammunition to get Via to
cooperate with their theory of the case.
The strategy apparently worked. Neither
attorney ever applied to be excused from
the case during its trial phase.
Also, fortune favored the defense case.
The defense had obtained the services of a
ballistics expert who indicated that he
would testify against the FBI expert if his
findings disagreed with the FBI' s. The
expert was an ex-armorer who had served
with the United States armed forces. His
name was Frank Candalisa.
Candalisa was a character. He had the
manner of a genial drill sergeant. At one
point he told the jury "at ease." The jury
loved him. He had only obtained access to
the shell casings after the FBI expert,
Richard Poppleton, had evaluated them.
Poppleton testified the breech block signatures of the Maguire shell and the
Geauga casings were made by the same
.25-caliber weapon.
Candalisa was not in the business of
ballistics analysis. There was little
demand for such services in New
Philadelphia, Ohio. But he examined the
casings, borrowed an industrial camera
from his employer and produced stereoscopic views of the two shell casings.
When brought together, according to
Candalisa, the photographs of the casings
did not match. Grisi and Gearinger had
originally retained Candalisa because of
the widely held opinion that FBI experts
would not testify in any proceeding
where an opposing expert might question
their evaluation. But the FBI ballistics
man testified, and ·so did Candalisa.
Candalisa's testimony was useful for a
"reasonable doubt" defense. Whether a
jury would disbelieve a ballistics expert in
favor of a factory worker from New
Philadelphia was another matter.
But Grisi and Gearinger had an ace in
the hole. The lady in Tamsin Park who
heard shots and the testimony of the coroner placed Maguire's death at approximately 7:30 a.m. on the morning of
September 21. The defense planned to use
this testimony to hang the prosecution.
Two witnesses testified for the defense
that they had seen Via near Lima, Ohio,
over 160 miles from the crime scene,
between 9 and 10 on the morning of the
21st. One witness was a trucker that had
picked up the hitchhiking Via near Lima .
The other was an Ohio State Highway
Patrolman who had stopped the trucker
and positively identified Via at trial as the
passenger in the truck he had stopped at
about 9:40 a.m. the morning of Sept. 21.
In order for Via to have shot Maguire
three times at 7:30 and been picked up in
Lima after 9:30, he would have had to
travel the 160 miles at well over 80 miles
an hour. The defense pointed out that Via
an indigent, did not have access to a pri:
vate helicopter. Therefore he could not
have been at the scene of the crime.
Thus when the jury had been out for
two-and-a-half days, it was natural for
Via to think he had won. Prosecutor
Bartek recalls to this day his belief that
Judge Barbuto was on the verge of declaring a mistrial when, 45 minutes after the
final charge had been given them, the jury
came back with a guilty verdict.
Grisi and Gearinger appealed the conviction to no avail. Unfortunately, no televised record seems to have been made of
the proceedings, although one might
think that the Via trial is a much better
example of American criminal justice at
work than, say, the O.J. trial. It is not surprising that Bartek and Gearinger went
on to serve as presidents of the Akron Bar
Association. Grisi served as president of
the Summit County Trial Lawyers
Association.
Via would probably agree, despite his
conviction, at least regarding Grisi and
Gearinger. After his conviction and
unsuccessful appeals, he contacted Grisi
twice, once through a literary agent, for
further representation. Grisi politely
declined.
Sources: Interviews with Bradford
Gearinger and Charles Grisi.
CONGRATULATIONS
to the Akron Bar 'Association
for 125 years of service to the legal profession and community
from
BLAKEMORE, MEEKER & BOWLER Co., LP.A.
A firm serving the needs of its clients for over three decades,
BLAKEMORE, MEEKER & BOWLER Co., LP.A.
also acknowledges its own attorney,
Stephen A. Fallis,
as the President-Elect of the Akron Bar Association
for the year 2000-2001.
ROBERT
W. BLAKEMORE • ROBERT C. MEEKER,,• MICHAEL B. BOWLER
RICHARD V. ZURZ • STEPHEN A. ~ALLIS • H. GILSON BLAIR
DARREN W. DEHAVEN • MORRISH. LAATSCH • THOMAS T. MULLEN
52 - 125th Anniversary