David Grann - The Devil & Sherlock Holmes

Though he refused to talk to me (“Go fuck yourself,” he said) or to other reporters (“I’ll only make an official statement when I’m actually killed,” he noted), he and his staff released a torrent of press releases attacking those pursuing him. “TRAFICANT BILL WOULD CREATE NEW AGENCY TO INVESTIGATE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT,” one release said. Another said, “TRAFICANT WANTS PRESIDENT TO INVESTIGATE FEDERAL AGENTS IN YOUNGSTOWN.” On the House floor, where his speech was protected against suits for libel, he was even bolder. “Mr. Speaker, I have evidence that certain F.B.I. agents in Youngstown, Ohio, have violated the RICO statute and … stole large sums of cash,” he claimed. “What is even worse, they ‘suggested’ to one of their field operative informants that he should commit murder. Mr. Speaker, murder. ”

Before I left Youngstown, I stopped by the F.B.I. office in Boardman, Ohio, where Kroner and his boss, Andy Arena, were trying to fend off Traficant’s allegations. They were careful not to say anything about the pending investigation of the Congressman, but it was clear they were under siege. On talk radio, Traficant supporters denounced Kroner as a thief, a con man, a crook, a creep, a liar, and a dope dealer. “The thing that most depressed me,” Kroner told me, “was when I became the subject on talk radio one day and they were discussing my integrity.” He folded his arms. “I just have to block out [those] things.” Rather than a hero, he had become almost a pariah. “Everything is turned upside down here,” Arena said.

As Kroner sat in his neatly pressed jacket and loafers, with his twenty-year-anniversary F.B.I. medallion mounted prominently on a thick gold ring, he seemed slightly defensive. “Every time we charge another public official, the [media] presents it as another black eye for the community,” he said. “I’d prefer if they’d portray it to the community as another step in cleansing ourselves. We’ve got to take a look at what’s being done here as a positive thing.”

After a while, Kroner offered to show me around the valley. As the sun was setting, we drove in his car past the old steel mills, past the Greek Coffee House and the Doll House and other gambling dens, past the place where Bernie the Jew met with his team of hit men and where Strollo had Ernie Biondillo killed. “We’re a part of this community like everyone else,” Kroner said. “We suffer the same problems if we live in a corrupt town.” He paused for a moment, perhaps because he couldn’t think of anything to add or perhaps because he realized that, after a lifetime of fighting the Mafia, there was little more that he could do. Finally, he said, “As long as they choose to put people in office who are corrupt, nothing will ever change.”

—July, 2000

In November, 2000, Traficant was elected to a ninth term in Congress. Six months later, he was indicted on ten counts of bribery, racketeering, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice. Among the charges were that he did political favors for the Buccis in exchange for free construction services on his farm, and assisted others in return for thousands of dollars in kickbacks. Traficant was also accused of asking an aide to lie to a federal grand jury and to destroy incriminating evidence. (The aide told authorities that Traficant watched while he took a blowtorch to envelopes that had once contained cash payoffs to the Congressman.)

The trial began in a federal district court in Cleveland in February of 2002, and, as Traficant had done nearly two decades earlier, he decided to represent himself. He accused the prosecution of having “the testicles of an ant,” and at one point stormed out of the courtroom. Yet this time a jury found him guilty on every count.

Saying he was “full of deceit and corruption and greed,” the judge sentenced Traficant to eight years in prison. In addition, the judge ordered that he pay more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in fines and nearly twenty thousand dollars in unpaid taxes, and return ninety-six thousand dollars in illegal proceeds.

As Kroner looked on, Traficant was led away in handcuffs. Kroner soon retired from the F.B.I. On July 24, 2002, the House of Representatives voted 420 to 1 to expel Traficant—making him only the second congressman since the Civil War to be expelled from the institution. While he was in prison, Traficant was put in solitary confinement for trying to foment a riot. In September of 2009, after serving seven years, he was released on probation. He was greeted in Youngstown by more than a thousand cheering supporters, many of them wearing T-shirts that said “Welcome Home Jimbo.” Traficant announced that it was “fifty-fifty” that he would run for Congress again.

True Crime

A POSTMODERN MURDER MYSTERY

In the southwest corner of Poland, far from any town or city, the Oder River curls sharply, creating a tiny inlet. The banks are matted with wild grass and shrouded by towering pine and oak trees. The only people who regularly trek to the area are fishermen—the inlet teems with perch and pike and sun bass. On a cold December day in 2000, three friends were casting there when one of them noticed something floating by the shore. At first, he thought it was a log, but as he drew closer he saw what looked like hair. The fisherman shouted to one of his friends, who poked the object with his rod. It was a dead body.

The fishermen called the police, who carefully removed the corpse of a man from the water. A noose was around his neck, and his hands were bound behind his back. Part of the rope, which appeared to have been cut with a knife, had once connected his hands to his neck, binding the man in a backward cradle, an excruciating position—the slightest wiggle would have caused the noose to tighten further. There was no doubt that the man had been murdered. His body was clothed in only a sweatshirt and underwear, and it bore marks of torture. A pathologist determined that the victim had virtually no food in his intestines, which indicated that he had been starved for several days before he was killed. Initially, the police thought that he had been strangled and then dumped in the river, but an examination of fluids in his lungs revealed signs of drowning, which meant that he was probably still alive when he was dropped into the water.

The victim—tall, with long dark hair and blue eyes—seemed to match the description of a thirty-five-year-old businessman named Dariusz Janiszewski, who had lived in the city of Wroclaw, sixty miles away, and who had been reported missing by his wife nearly four weeks earlier; he had last been seen on November 13th, leaving the small advertising firm that he owned, in downtown Wroclaw. When the police summoned Janiszewski’s wife to see if she could identify the body, she was too distraught to look, and so Janiszewski’s mother did instead. She immediately recognized her son’s flowing hair and the birthmark on his chest.

The police launched a major investigation. Scuba divers plunged into the frigid river, looking for evidence. Forensic specialists combed the forest. Dozens of associates were questioned, and Janiszewski’s business records were examined. Nothing of note was found. Although Janiszewski and his wife, who had wed eight years earlier, had a brief period of trouble in their marriage, they had since reconciled and were about to adopt a child. He had no apparent debts or enemies, and no criminal record. Witnesses described him as a gentle man, an amateur guitarist who composed music for his rock band. “He was not the kind of person who would provoke fights,” his wife said. “He wouldn’t harm anybody.”