Hartford Courant from Hartford, Connecticut • 182

D2 THE HARTFORD COURANT: Wednesday, February 10, 1988 Legislative inquiry on justice system focuses on Speers case Continued from previous page npllv hP03n foctifvincr lacf UVi1n "-J wau vvwu He followed Lt. Bruce Haines, head of the state police organized crime squad; Speers; Dranginis; and Moynahan. On Thursday, the committee plans to question Pol. Lester J. Forst, commissioner of public safety, and Chief State's Attorney John J.

Kelly. Several suggestions already have been made that Speers's prosecution was drawn into a larger pattern of fighting between judges and some members of the state police. One of those suggestions came from Dranginis, who testified that she believes the state police were somehow behind an attempt last March to improperly influence a pretrial ruling she was scheduled to make in the Speers case. The state police and Kelly used Speers as an undercover agent in a gambling investigation dircted at Dranginis' husband. That investigation occurred while Dranginis was set to rule at the hearing.

The investigation proved no wrongdoing on the part of Dranginis husband, restaurateur Frederick J. Zivic, but police had a recording in which Speers mentioned Zivic's name in a conversation with a Tor-ringtonman. Dranginis testified that Moynahan met privately with her in March and told her that Speers had the recording. Moynahan said Speers would use the tape if she did not make the right ruling in the hearing, Dranginis has testified. Moynahan denied an attempt at blackmail.

Rather, he said, he asked for the meeting to warn Dranginis that state police might have been trying to embarrass her through her husband. Dranginis said Moynahan told her the state police were suspicious of her because she is close to John A. Speziale, the former chief justice of the state Supreme Court. Moynahan said he may have discussed Speziale with Dranginis during the March meeting and almost certainly had done so before. "I clearly remember having that conversation with her a couple of standing distrust between the state police and the judiciary.

"It just appears to me that we have another turf war going on and the people of Connecticut don't benefit when that's going on," Rep. William L. Wollenberg, R-Farmington, said last week. The committee also has been zeroing in on Speers's relationship with the officers he reported to on the organized crime squad Haines in particular. Some testimony suggested that Speers used his association, with police to his advantage, both financially and in terms of the information he was able to obtain.

Moynahan said Speers was using police more than they were using him. "It became a case of the tail wagging the dog, rather than the dog wagging the tail. Someone suggested to me recently that now that Speers is no longer an informant for SOCITF, there is no reason for SO-CITF to go on functioning," Moyna-. ban said, referring to the statewide crime task force. Speers testified about one conversation he had that indicates he had access to sensitive information about both prosecutors and top organized crime fighters.

He said he was told by an officer in the late 1970s that McGuigan, who then was an assistant prosecutor for organized crime and political corruption, distrusted Speers and wanted him discontinued as an informant In a report associated with a 1985 grand jury, Superior Court Judge Barry R. Schaller charged that Speers was using his relationship with police to make money. Speers, who claims to make a living gambling and swindling bookmakers, testified last week that he accepted tips on where to gamble from both the police and organized crime figures. Police wanted him to collect evidence, and the criminals wanted him to bankrupt their competition. "I never took an oath of poverty," Speers told the committee.

times at least, prior to that occasion," Moynahan said. Many people in Connecticut believe state police harbor a grudge against Speziale and certain members of the judiciary because of a ruling he made ordering a new trial in the case of Peter Reilly. Reilly eventually was cleared of charges that he killed his mother, over the strong objections of state police. Speers testified last week that he, too, is a victim of the distrust be- tween state police, prosecutors and judges. He believes he was given a nine-month sentence an unusually long sentence in gambling cases because he once participated in an investigation of Speziale at the request of the state police.

That inquiry centered on allegations of illegal gambling at a Tor-rington country club, co-owned by Speziale. Speers testified that his work as an informant enabled state police to place a wiretap on a telephone at the country club. Speziale has since resigned from the court. archdiocese Eastern Connecticut State University, and from 1973 through 1979 directed campus ministries for the Norwich diocese. He also was personnel director for the diocese.

Since 1985 he has been Reilly's "delegate for clergy." He also serves as executive coordinator of the diocesan boards of conciliation and arbitration, among other positions. for retarded files court action Auxiliary bishop named for in the community. Barry Bos president of the Connecticut Association for Retarded Citizens, said that while "the vast majority of community placements are good and effective without the necessary monitoring and data-collection we have difficulty proving that fact." Bosworth said the association is aware that mentally retarded people do face some problems in the community, particularly in getting adequate medical and dental care. The memorandum states that such problems were evident in a study authorized by the Department, of Mental Retardation but that the agency has failed to investigate the problems responsibly or to make the information available to the public. Instead, the department "stopped the distribution of any reports based on the data and in effect brought to a halt the quality assurance process." "The termination was motivated in part by the commissioner's concern about making public present deficiencies," the memorandum said.

Continued from previous page Salle Academy in Providence, R.I. He studied at St. Thomas Seminary in Bloomfield, St. Bernard Seminary College in Rochester. N.Y., and the Gregorian University in Rome, from which he received a master's degree in theology in 1966.

He later studied canon law at the Catholic University of Officials pursue motive in death of crime figure Haines also testified about distrust. He said he secretly recorded a March 1985 meeting with Connelly because of misgivings he had about the commitment of Connelly and other prosecutors to the arrest on a bribery charge of former Assistant Waterbury State's Attorney Arthur McDonald. At the time, both the state police and former Chief State's Attorny Austin McGuigan accused one another of dragging their feet on the McDonald arrest. Connelly eventually signed McDonald's arrest warrant Dranginis said distrust of the judiciary and certain prosecutors is limited to a segment of the state police department. "I think it is clearly on the very upper levels," Dranginis said.

Referring to her own case, she said: "I do not feel that what occurred in this case is random. I feel it is another step." At least one member of the committee said developments in the Speers case are symptoms of long Advocacy group Continued from previous page to the removal of hundreds of residents from the training school and their placement in group homes and apartments in the community. However, the mental retardation department has been criticized repeatedly, by advocates and by a panel of monitors named to oversee the state's compliance with the consent decree, for failing to move people into the community fast enough and for failing to ensure that adequate services exist before placing people mr I America. He was assistant pastor at St Sebastian Church in Middletown from 1966 to 1969 and later taught religion at St. Bernard's Girls' High School in New London and at St.

Bernard High School in Mont-ville. He has served as a chaplain to Catholic students at Wesleyan University, Connecticut College and has been able to say that they run everyinmg," contrary to most other the East Coast cities. Mayer refused to speculate on the meaning or possible repercussions of ueenzzi siaymg. DeBrizzi was convicted nf mnnina an illegal gambling operation in the T7l a raurieia county area mat Drougnt in millions of dollars a vear Hp had a tough demeanor and was given to violent outDursts, ponce say. Unlike many of his rank, DeBrizzi did not manaee his nneratinn frnm a distance, but took a hands-on ap- proacn, law enforcement officials say.

Police were pleasantly surprised when a 1984 raid of his Stratford home turned up extensive records of a bookmaking operation. "He was the custodian of the records," one law enforcement officer said. "He wasn't insulated at all in 1984." DeBrizzi, whose criminal career naa begun when he was a teenager, was arrested on racketeering and gambling charges in that raid, and he was sentenced in 1985 to serve 90 days of a three-year sentence. Also convicted in connertinn vtith thai- raid were DeBrizzi's son, Curtis, and uettrizzi orotner, Vincent. Riccio has told investigators he last saw DeBrizzi at a Howard Johnson restaurant in Stamford on Jan.

30 the Saturday afternoon DeBrizzi's wife saw him leaving with Riccio to do some shopping. DeBrizzi told Riccio he wanted the car for half an hour and to wait for him at the restaurant investigators saia. kiccio waited nearly three hours and then began making a series of calls that led tn a miocino person report on DeBrizzi being iiiea. Fairfield County State's Attorney Donald A. Browne is far from optimistic about the chances of making an arrest in the slaying.

"We're certainly not going to say this case isn't going to be solved," he said. "I'm just going to say I'm not confident." "These are always difficult cases because there are rarely ever any witnesses," he said. frnm nroviniiB naoa Officials will not say what, if anything, they have learned from watching the tapes made by security cameras mounted on the roof of the Trumbull mall. It is possible the tapes picked up the car being abandoned at the lot and the driver who brought it there. Jt is equally possible that the cameras, which police said often are not loaded, recorded nothing.

Police believe DeBrizzi's body and the car were in the parking lot through six days of mostly freezing temperatures before the body was discovered Friday. DeBrizzi's was the first slaying of an organized crime leader in Connecticut since Frank Piccolo a "capo," or captain, in the Gambino family was shot to death at a Bridgeport telephone booth in September 1981. Law enforcement officials say Piccolo's killing was sanctioned by the family, but was unique in that the contract apparently was given to members of another crime family to carry out. DeBrizzi was a longtime associate of Piccolo's and had been a "made" member one trusted by the inner circle of the Gambino family at least since 1966, law enforcement officials say. He took over for Piccolo after Piccolo's killing, in an otherwise orderly succession, officials say.

The two men had lived in the same blue-collar neighborhood in Stratford. As the Gambino family's highest-ranking member in Connecticut DeBrizzi was one of a dozen or so crime family members and associates in the state, law enforcement officials say. Stamford Deputy Police Chief George Mayer, a 28-year veteran of the force who has made a hobby of tracking organized crime, said there has been competition among the crime families for turf in Fairfield County. "Fairfield County has really been the unpicked plum on the East Coast" Mayer said. "No one family Reg.

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"As more and more resources are going to be given to the Medicaid population of the state, the shortfall will only start to grow," she said. To help compensate for inadequate Medicaid reimbursement for outpatient clinic services, Yale-New Haven officials have requested that state officials ask the federal government for an PYPmntinn frnm Ag isting rates, citing a financial hardship. Bruner said Mount Sinai would join in the request. Stephen Heintz, commissioner of income maintenance, said he was sympathetic to the problems of the inner-city hospitals. Heintz said his department along with the federal government is exploring a plan that would add "flexibility to alter our reimbursement methodology" for those hospitals treating a large number of Medicaid patients.

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