The Case Against Brian Spencer

"A murder case? They taped over evidence in a murder case?"

She nodded her head.

What we also do not have is any proof that Dalfo was ever in the car that was supposed to have taken him to the clearing where he died. "The detectives, for the most part, did a very thorough job," Baldwin said. "They interviewed all these prostitutes, administered all these lie tests, conducted searches for the possum. One thing they forgot to do was search the car."

Lynne Baldwin sat dead still for a moment in her beautiful office. Beautiful office, beautiful clothes, beautiful globe. It is always surprising, the places where things are decided. Baldwin listened to a hard assessment of her case against Brian Spencer. Her expression never changed. "We may lose," she said, "but my job is different from a private attorney's. I don't always have to win." She thought for a moment, and then she said, "I get a lot of cases that aren't as clear-cut as you would like them to be, and I win my share."

That much was evident. Lynne Baldwin is the last person you want to see talking about you to a jury. Or the newspapers.

And then she said, "I'll tell you this, he'll know he's been in a fight."

Perhaps. Two weeks later Baldwin would pull out of the case when she was promoted—"I got rid of that mess," she says—and turned it over to Fred Susaneck, another assistant state attorney. After a bond hearing on April 24, Spencer was released from the jail out on Gun Club Road on $50,000 bail, posted by some old Islander teammates and friends. Still, as he waits for a murder-and-kidnapping trial scheduled to begin in the fall, you can't help thinking of Brian Spencer and of the time he has already spent in jail—a place full of reflections—and of the little that is known of the things that happened to him on the way there. And you think that Brian Spencer has been struggling all his life.

It is hard to imagine, though, that he needs this murder trial to know he has been in a fight.