As if on cue, one of the jurors shouted, "What's My Line?" says Sanders. "It's the only time I've seen a prosecutor do that."
But that wager was nothing compared with Hartzler's current challenge. The 45-year-old Ohio native is heading up the team of eight attorneys prosecuting the April 19 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which killed at least 169 people. On Aug. 15, Hartzler, who has multiple sclerosis, watched from his wheelchair as former Army buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols pleaded not guilty to an 11-count federal indictment that includes charges of murder and use of a weapon of mass destruction. "Whoever did this should spend some time in hell," Hartzler once said. "I just want to accelerate that process."
He knows that won't be easy. He has already helped negotiate sensitive immunity deals with Michael Fortier, another Army buddy of McVeigh's, who allegedly helped him case the federal building, and with McVeigh's younger sister Jennifer. But in his 14 years as a federal prosecutor, including three as chief of the criminal division for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, Hartzler has handled dozens of complicated cases, including the 1985 conspiracy conviction of members of a Puerto Rican nationalist group linked to a nine-year bombing spree. "We were faced with many of the same challenges [as in the Oklahoma case]," says colleague Jim Ferguson. "We had to weave all those different acts into a coherent narrative the jury could understand."
And Hartzler is not one to let any obstacle—even MS, the degenerative nerve disease that has hindered His ability to walk—stand in his way. "It could be a lot worse," he has said. "It's not fatal. It's not contagious. I've learned that if you're going to be one of God's chosen, MS is not the worst."
Although Hartzler has shied away from publicity since volunteering for the Oklahoma job in May, friends say he thrives under pressure. "A lot of the fun for Joe is in the battle," says former colleague Dan Purdom.
The middle son of Rex and Merle Hartzler, who both worked in insurance, Joe grew up in Worthington, Ohio, earned his bachelor's degree in English from Amherst College, then graduated first in his class from the American University law school in 1978. After law school he spent a year clerking for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington before signing on with the U.S. attorney in Chicago. "He had an incredibly intense work ethic," remembers colleague Ira Raphaelson, "but he never took himself too seriously." Indeed, Joe became well-known for livening up the parties after the office's weekly softball games. Recalls a teammate: "Joe could always tell the type of perfume a woman was wearing. He would walk up and down the bar, and he was never wrong."
But his heart belonged to law school classmate Lisa, now 42, whom he married in 1981. After his diagnosis of MS in 1988, he wanted to spend more time with Lisa and their children Alex, 10, Adam, 8, and Matthew, 4. In 1991, Hartzler took a job with the U.S. attorney's office in slower-paced Springfield, Ill. "He's a person who really likes to go home for lunch," says friend Jeremy Margolis. "He values every minute of family time as only a person in his situation can."
After watching the news reports coming out of Oklahoma City last April, however, Hartzler felt compelled to jump back into the fray. He offered his services as a prosecutor to the Justice Department. "It doesn't surprise me he felt a responsibility to say, 'I can do this. I've done it before,' " says Raphaelson. "It would not have been a function of ego to say there are very few prosecutors who have put together a case like this."
The move has meant a change in the regular family routine: Hartzler now spends his weeks in Oklahoma, going home on weekends. But the Hartzlers are making do. "Obviously he's making a tremendous personal sacrifice," says Margolis. "But he's not doing it because he wants to be famous. He feels honored to be part of the process."
CYNTHIA SANZ
LEAH ESKIN in Chicago, with bureau reports
- Contributors:
- Leah Eskin.
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