Taking the stand was even more painful for Pelosi's father, Robert, who had delivered potentially devastating evidence against his son four days earlier. The retired banker testified that at a family wedding within a day of Amnon's murder—but before his battered body was discovered—Danny asked him, "If someone wanted to get rid of something you never wanted to be found, what would you do?"
Such bombshells have come to seem the norm in this steamy saga of blood and greed, with a cast of characters straight out of a soap opera. At the center were Ammon, 52—the dashing financier found nude and bludgeoned in his East Hampton, N.Y., mansion on Oct. 22, 2001—and his beautiful wife, Generosa, 45, who had been bitterly battling him over her share of his $46 million fortune and custody of their then 11-year-old twins. Enter Pelosi, her married electrician lover. Three months after the murder, Danny married Generosa, who would die of breast cancer in August 2003—but not before leaving behind two conflicting wills and a battle over custody of the twins between Ammon's sister and the children's British nanny. "It's a great morality tale," says Leon Friedman, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra University. "There's a tremendous amount of money and sex. It's like a Greek tragedy."
From the start of the investigation, police looked hard at Danny Pelosi. Not only did the timing of the murder financially benefit his wife-to-be Generosa—since her divorce was not yet finalized, she inherited Ammon's entire estate—but Pelosi had overseen the installation of video surveillance at Ammon's mansion, a system mysteriously unplugged at the time of his death. Then again, investigators may have had little incentive to look further, given all the people who allegedly heard Pelosi's damaging statements. One was James Nicolino, a contractor pal who introduced Pelosi to Generosa when they worked together on her Manhattan townhouse. According to Nicolino's Oct. 25 testimony, Pelosi told him back in the fall of 2000 of a plan to kill Ammon and marry Generosa. (Shargel claims Nicolino is prejudiced because Pelosi had had an affair with his wife.) Later in the trial, prosecutor Janet Albertson plans to call jailhouse snitches who've allegedly heard Pelosi confess. "They could have 15 admissions, they could have 75 admissions," says Shargel, but "it is physically impossible for him to have committed these murders."
As he suggested in his opening statement, Shargel plans to argue an alternate theory of the crime: that Ammon was conflicted sexually and killed by a man he picked up the night of his death. Among the evidence: a single pubic hair found on Ammon's shoulder, which was lost before it could be analyzed; blood that doesn't match Pelosi or anyone else known to have been in the home, discovered near the panel that controls the video system; and a 9:44 p.m. cellphone message Ammon left for his married mistress, saying that he was nervous about men following him at the gay beach near his home. Noting that the killer stripped the bed but left behind the blood-soaked mattress, Shargel told the jury, "I suggest to you that the person who removed the bed sheets was concerned about semen."
The one bright aspect of the trial is that Ammon and Generosa's twins Alexa and Gregory are far away from it. Ammon's sister and the nanny have worked out an arrangement for them to temporarily live together in Alabama until the trial is over, after which the issue of who should have custody of the children may be settled. "You can only hope for the best," says Court TVs Catherine Crier, who is following the trial closely, of the children. "I'm sad when I think about the length of time it will take to mend these tragedies, much less put it behind them in their lives."
Pam Lambert. Diane Herbst and Tom Duffy in Riverhead
- Contributors:
- Diane Herbst,
- Tom Duffy.
CELINE’S INFERTILITY STRUGGLE: MY PRIVATE HEARTBREAK
Daily injections, painful tests and four failed IVF attempts: The singer, 41, reveal her dreams for a second baby. ‘I’ll try until it works’
