New Maloney appeal targets alleged movie talks, autopsy

Boyle says raising a movie treatment of the Maloney story as an issue is "phony" and "frivolous"

By Melanie Fonder
For The News-Chronicle

WASHINGTON - John Maloney's best chance of acquittal lies with the fact that he hires celebrated defense attorney GERALD BOYLE, famous for his defense of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Boyle's strategy hinges on relentlessly raising reasonable doubt concerning Maloney's whereabouts during the time of Sandy's death as well as his motive and capability of actually killing the mother of his own children.

If those lines sound straight out of a movie, it's because, well, they are. A rough treatment of a movie to be titled "Playing With Fire," obtained by the News-Chronicle, is based on the murder trial of former Green Bay arson detective John Maloney, who was convicted in February 1999 of murdering his wife, Sandy, and setting fire to her body.

And Maloney's former attorney, Boyle, who most recently represented Mark Chmura in his sexual assault trial, may have been negotiating the movie rights long before the case was over.

Dated Dec. 1, 1999, the fax was sent from the office of Barry Weitz, of Irish Films Inc., to Boyle - nearly a year before the high-profile Milwaukee attorney was done representing Maloney in his first appeal. The brief treatment says the movie would be written and produced by Howard Weisman, of Forest Hills Pictures, and Weitz.

The seven-page movie treatment accurately depicts the scenario of the actual trial, when Boyle pinned his client's defense on blaming Tracy Hellenbrand, John's ex-girlfriend and a former undercover Internal Revenue Service agent, who testified against John.

One scene depicts investigator Kim Skorlinski browbeating Hellenbrand into helping to try to get a confession out of Maloney:

Hellenbrand writhes uncomfortably under his inappropriate gaze. "I'll help you and then I'm out of here," she spits back.

Over two days, on July 27 and 28, 1998, in a hotel room wired with audio and video surveillance at the Lady Luck Casino in Las Vegas, Hellenbrand - using every fiber of her being, sexual and otherwise - taunts, teases, cajoles, role-plays, browbeats, manhandles and generally steers Maloney into admitting that he did, in fact, pay a visit to his wife's house on the day of her murder.

As captured on the videotape, Maloney admits once, and only once, that he was at the house the day she was killed, but he maintains that he had nothing to do with her death.

After repeatedly telling the police that he was not at Sandy's house on the day of her death, Maloney's sudden admission on the surveillance tape gives Green Bay police enough evidence to arrest him in Las Vegas...

The movie treatment forms the basis of one of the three foundations for Maloney's next appeal, a post-conviction motion known as a 974.06, which will be filed with the Brown County Circuit Court in the next two or three months, according to Lew Wasserman, Maloney's new attorney. This appeal could go before Judge Peter Naze, who originally heard the case.

Lew Wasserman, a Milwaukee-based attorney who replaced Boyle on the case last fall, said each issue raised in a 974.06 motion must address two factors: First, there must be a demonstration of ineffective counsel, and second, that the ineffective counsel then caused prejudice in the outcome of the case.

All three sections are based on what Wasserman thinks was Boyle's ineffective counsel, both at the trial level and the appeal level. "There's no question in my mind that (negotiation for the movie rights) was going on during the time that Boyle was representing Maloney, on appeal or on trial, or both," Wasserman said. "This is probably the most inflammatory, because it directly implicates the lawyer's ethical obligations to his client."

Reached for a telephone interview, Boyle vehemently denied any charges of ineffective counsel, specifically any contracting for media rights.

"There's a great story with the Maloney case, but I never had any type of contract with that," Boyle said. "That's a phony, frivolous issue, and I will go after anyone who makes that claim."

Boyle also said Maloney was aware media organizations like ABC-TV's "20/20" and CourtTV were interested in the case, which Boyle said could sometimes aid cases through public knowledge and sympathy.

Regarding the Maloney movie treatment, Boyle said Weisman had expressed interest in other high-profile cases as well, including the Dahmer trial.

"If he sent me something, that's fine, but I never entered into a contract with him," Boyle said. "If there were any discussions, it wasn't for my benefit, it was for Maloney's benefit."

The other two areas being appealed are that Boyle was ineffective as counsel by not asking for a second autopsy and other tests related to the physical evidence, and that he argued whether Hellenbrand should have been interviewing Maloney in Las Vegas for the wrong reasons.

"All of the evidence and the techniques were available in '98 - it's just that Boyle didn't choose to use them," Wasserman said of the lack of a second autopsy.

Bridget Boyle, who was co-counsel with her father on the case, said that John Teggatz, who conducted the only autopsy on Sandy Maloney, is a well-respected forensic pathologist whose findings were consistent with an independent review conducted for the defense.

Wasserman said it would be more difficult to prove the prejudice part of the equation because Sandra Maloney's remains were cremated, though some samples were still available that could be retested.

In Las Vegas, Maloney made statements to Hellenbrand in a hotel that were recorded from a room next door. Wasserman said investigators could not have Hellenbrand act as she did in the hotel, because both she and Maloney were represented by counsel.

"In essence, they hired an 'agency' to do what they could not do for themselves," Wasserman said. "[Maloney] retains Boyle in early May and then in July when the videos are recorded, if Tracy Hellenbrand is there on her own, without prior negotiation, and had discussed it with John Maloney, then decided on her own to become a witness of the state, fine. But that wasn't what happened."

Bridget Boyle maintained they raised that issue in pretrial motions that Naze dismissed in a 45-page decision.

That is one of the most frustrating aspects of the case for Gin Maloney, John's sister, who said that Boyle was hired at Hellenbrand's suggestion in the first place.

"John always said, 'Why get a lawyer? Then it looks like you did something wrong,'" she said.

Wasserman said if this appeal is not successful, his office will immediately take the case to the federal level.

Melanie Fonder, who covered the John Maloney case during her tenure as a News-Chronicle reporter, is a staff writer for The Hill, a Washington, D.C., newspaper that covers Capitol Hill. Her column appears Mondays. Write to her at melfonder@yahoo.com.