The Case Against Brian Spencer

Dalfo's bank statements, which indicate he spent what Baldwin called "a lot of money."

More searches for the dead possum.

The office itself is beautiful, in a comfortable way. Plants, good furniture, a huge antique globe in the corner. And there are signs, one over the light switch in particular: ATTITUDES ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN FACTS.

"Is what you have," she was asked when she has finished with the file, "anything more than an ex-prostitute who has lied through this whole thing?"

"I don't think it's fair to say she's lied all along," Baldwin said. "She's tried to tell the truth, she's turned her life around. A couple of weeks ago, The Miami Herald ran a story about this and called her a 'former call girl' and she called me up, just bananas...."

"I'll tell you something," she said. "They [the Fialcos] came into this office together and sat right in those chairs, and we went through it all. And for a while, it was pretty tough going. He is a very Germanic sort of guy, very stiff and proper, and you could see he didn't like it at all.

"But once it was all out in the open, he accepted it. He supports her now, and I think that someone like that, sitting there supporting you, lends credibility. Do you remember John Dean's wife sitting behind him at those hearings? It gave him a kind of credibility...."

So lined up against Spencer we now have exactly one witness and her very proper husband, who has forgiven her. And we have a question. Couldn't the "untactful" Dalfo have had acquaintances even more untactful than himself? And couldn't a taste for paid escorts and cocaine, and a habit of spending surprising amounts of money have gotten him into enough trouble with one of these untactful acquaintances that he ended up dead? If, let us say, De Lena knew about an execution committed by such an untactful acquaintance—who we can assume would not look kindly on her cooperating with the police—who is she going to give to the state attorney's office when Lynne Baldwin comes around 4� years later, threatening to put her in jail?

That is what we have.

What we do not have are two tapes of the statements made by Diane De Lena when she was originally questioned by the sheriff's investigators five years ago. "Deputies," Baldwin said, "they're always running out of tapes. So when they need one, they sometimes borrow it from another file, something they aren't working, and tape over whatever was on it."