From:  THE ORLANDO SENTINEL ,  May 5, 1996 Sunday

Feb. 10, 1974: A 16-year-old Orlando high school student is stabbed, raped end
left for dead in a Lockhart field. She survived and identified Spaziano as her
attacker.

21 YEARS LATER, RAPE CASE COULD BE TICKET TO FREEDOM FOR SPAZIANO
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The young men hiding in some bushes beckoned to the 16-year-old student as
she walked down the street in her orange hip-huggers. She slipped into the front
seat of his truck, lured by the promise of a marijuana cigarette.
Another men jumped in. Then she saw the gleam of a knife. She was forced to
the floorboard . . .
The teen went limp during the rapes in a trash-strewn biker clubhouse, hoping
the men would return her home as promised.
But she awoke in a field, miles from home, her eyes wet with blood. She
screamed.
Blinded and left for dead that night, the young woman embarked on a journey
that is keeping one man in prison - for now.

Lawyers for that man, Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano, 50, filed a new appeal
Last week, seeking to overturn his 1975 conviction for the 1974 rape. Although
other appeals have failed, this one has a twist.
Anthony "Tony" DiLisio, who testified that Spaziano admitted raping a woman
and slashing her eyes, has changed his story. The 38-year-old Pensacola auto
restorer, formerly of Maitland, says he lied at the trial 21 years ago.
If a judge believes him and rules it could have made a difference to jurors
two decades ago, Spaziano could win a new rape trial.
It's a defense strategy that already worked to get Spaziano off FLorida's
death row.

(DiLisio announced last June that he lied during Spaziano's trial in the 1973
murder of 18-year-old Orlando hospital clerk Laura Harberts).

. . . . .

The victim, now 39, lives in North FLorida with her two children. She
declined to discuss the case. But in an interview last year, her mother was
outraged that people were taking DiLisio's recantation seriously.
"I don't understand where they're coming up with all of this stuff." she told
The Orlando Sentinel. "Somebody's got to speak up and say that it's not true."
She said her daughter, blind in one eye from the attack, wanted her ordeal
over.
"She always said she wanted to be the one to throw the switch," the mother
said. "He left her for dead."

Spaziano named suspect
----------------------
After the late-night rape on Feb. 9, 1974, the two men ordered the student
with her torn bra, blouse and panties into a dark field north of Orlando, where
they had driven her. She was told to bend over - she thought, for more sex.
Then she felt her own belt tighten around her neck.
Darkness.
When she awoke, she couldn't see through the 12 bloody stab wounds to her
eyes. Her throat was cut. Screaming, she wandered over the field, waving at the
blurry images of cars. A motorist stopped end walked her to a home at 7111
Edgeweter Drive, where resident Ann Hawkins wrapped the bloody teen in a
blanket. Her son phoned for help.
Hawkins, who had trouble seeing colors, told authorities that a black pickup
truck with a white canper top had sped into her yard 20 minutes earlier.
She saw a door open and shut before two bearded men drove away.

When Orange County sheriff's deputy James Hoover arrived, the girl told him
she had been abducted at knifepoint and raped. One attacker was "Ronnie," about
24 years old, 5-foot-7, 160 pounds with straight, long black hair and a
mustache. The second man, Dennis, had a dark beard and wore a sleeveless denim
jacket with a T-shirt. She later described him as an Abraham Lincoln look-alike
with a penetrating gare.
The case eventually landed on the desk of sheriff's detective Joann Hardee, a
feisty, 5-foot tall sheriff's secretary who had become the agency's first female
investigator in 1970. In 1972, she was tapped to interview child and female
victims because of her keen rapport.
"She was a super interrogator," said retired sheriff's Lt. Phillip Eller, a
fellow detective. "She was good with female victims."

Spaziano - nicknamed "Crazy Joe" because of his wild behavior or his partly
paralyzed face due to a traffic accident - was an imnediete suspect, said
ex-prosecutor Ray Sharpe, now an attorney in Denver.
Spaziano hung around the Outlaws clubhouse where the rape supposedly took
place; he fit the suspect's description, owned the kind of knife that could have
been used in the attack and left Florida imnediately after the rape, Sharpe
said.
The biker also drove a blue pickup with a camper top. similar to the one
Hawkins saw, and had lived and worked in the Lockhart area, where the rape
victim was dumped and four bodies of women had been found in the prior six
months.

On Feb. 11, 1974, a newspaper headline declared: "Outlaws Get BLame For
Attack." The story quoted deputies saying that the two suspects, one 5-foot-5
and the other 5-foot-8. were bikers.
Tips poured in. Five to 10 women told deputies that a man with a penetrating
gere who resembled Abraham Lincoln had raped them, too, Hardee said.
Raped in their homes or snatched from the street, they knew their attacker as
Joe, little Joe or Crazy Joe. ALthough the latest victim called her short
attacker Dennis, his description matched with the others.
"All gave the exact same description," Hardee said. "Joe went for the most
degradation. He went for the most violence."
But none of the women would testify in court because they feared public
exposure - or the Outlaws. Sharpe said the biker gang, notorious in Central
Florida during the 1970s, harassed and intimidated some victims.

By Feb. 12. the teen's story began to unravel. A headline that day read:
"inconsistencies Hamper Probe Into Girl's Assault."
Two days after the attack, the Oak Ridge High School student told
investigators she made up the story of being abducted at knifepoint while
walking to her home off South Orange BLossom Trail.

Recovering from extensive surgery, she admitted getting into the men's truck
for marijuana. She said she thought the lie would make her story of rape at the
Outlaws clubhwse more believable. She also said she had not wanted her parents
to know about her drug use.
Investigators pressed ahead. On Feb. 13, sheriff's detective Larry Shultz got
a warrant for Spaziano's arrest. He said the victim "accurately described" the
suspect's "small stature,... Lincolnesque nose, chipped front tooth, tattoos
on both arms . . . long black very curly hair."
whether she had seen tattoos uould later become an issue.

Detectives were ready to arrest their suspect, but Spaziano had left tom.
After Chicago police arrested him for drunkenness in April 1975, he was returned
to Orlando and pieced in a police lineup on May 13, 1975, 13 months after the
rape.
By then, he looked different. He had shaved his beard and pulled beck his
wavy hair with a rubber band. The woman left the lineup, indicating she
recognized no one.
Sharpe, who attended the lineup with investigators, said she told them
afterward that her attacker was present, but she did not want to identify him.
"Oh, he was there. But I just don't want to go through with it," Sharpe
recalled her saying.
Sharpe said he and the investigators appealed to her to come forward so no
one else would be injured in another attack.
She later said she went home and prayed for courage. The next day, she picked
out suspect no. 2 - Spaziano - as the man who forced her to perform oral sex.
The women later testified that she recognized Spaziano imnediately but
remained silent out of fear of going to court.

Sharpe concedes the teen was slow to tell all she knew, but said her behavior
can be explained.
"She was only a kid," he said. "She put herself through a great deal of
emotional trauna and faced an embarrassing situation and the ridicule of
cross-examination . . . The easy thing to do was to bail out . . ."

But defense lawyer James Russ, who is representing Spaziano, alleged in court
documents last week that the teen had seen news reports about Spaziano before
the lineup end that investigators had coached her to implicate the biker.

At trial, she denied the accusations. Sharpe said he knew of no one helping
the worman pick Spaziano from the lineup.
A lie-detector test in march 1974 raised another credibility question.
Sheriff's detective Jim Shannon, who administered the test one year after
receiving his polygraph certification, interpreted the woman's responses to
indicate she left with the men and willingly had sex.
Shannon, now retired, said he recalled little about the case. He gave 1,500
such tests in his career but conceded they are not perfect.
"She could be lying or she could be nervous," Shennon said.
The test results were not used at trial. Questions about the reliability of
polygraph tests have kept them out of trials for decades. Sharpe and
Spaziano's trial attorney, Ed Kirkland, said they didn't recall the test.
Puss was not available for comnent. But one of Spaziano's earlier appeal
Lawyers, Nichel Hello, alleges that authorities never disclosed the test
until last year.

Tony DiLisio, an Outlaw wannabe who, in October 1974, was in a Volusia
County jubenile center because his father had reported him for possessing
marijuana.
DiLisio, then 17, had hung around Spaziano. He told Seminole and Orange
county detectives that the biker had admitted raping a 16-year-old woman and
slashing her eyes. He said Spaziano also acknowledged killing two women and
dumping their bodies at a dump near Lockhart.

Seven months later, investigations of Spaziano were in high gear. Detectives
interviewed DiLisio again on way 13, 1975. He repeated his story, saying
Spaziano also showed him two female bodies at the dump in August 1973.
In a statement given to Hardee that day, DiLisio wrote that Spaziano, told him
he "stabbed a young, good-looking girl's eyes out and raped her and he said she
was dead." After learning the girl survived, according to DiLisio, Spaziano told
him: "If he knew she was not dead, he would of went back and finished it off."
To enhance his memory in the murder case, Orlendo hypnotist Joe mcCawley was
enlisted to question DiLisio on may 15 and 16, 1975.

Twenty years later, DiLisio would testify that investigators helped him come
up with the story, even showing him the dump between hypnosis sessions. The
born-again Christian insists Spaziano never took him to the dump. Memory
experts hired by Spaziano's lawyers have blasted mcCawley's technique.
 Although hypnosis was not used for the rape case, DiLisio still posed
problems as a witness. He was a heavy user of marijuana, cocaine and acid and
admitted to being on drugs while talking with Spaziano about the rape.

Two other people provided information that filled in gaps for prosecutors and
gave them confidence to proceed.
DiLisio's father, now dead, said he, too, heard Spaziano talk of raping and
killing women.
Spaziano's companion at the time, Darcy Fauss, told investigators the biker
became nervous after hearing radio news reports Feb. 10 about a rape victim
left for dead.
Fauss said she and Spaziano fled to New York in his blue pickup with a camper
top. He was upset because "somebody" had used his truck in the attack on the
girl.
The elder DiLisio and Fauss would never testify at the rape trial, however.
1975 trial judge: No doubt

On Aug. 11, 1975, a jury was chosen to hear the case of the state of
FLorida vs. Joseph R. Spaziano.
The Orlando courtroom was tense, filled with bikers and extra security
officers.
The girl was the first to take the stand. Pale and soft-spoken, she confessed
her drug use end lies, including her mention at one point that her short
attacker, Demis, had reddish hair. She said she gave the wrong description
because she was wavering about going forward with the case at first.
"She was an excellent witness, tearful, a pretty little girl ... timid.
She apparently was a very compelling witness and one that a defense lawyer
would be very careful to avoid hammering at her because it would cause jury
sympathy," Spaziano attorney Kirkland said.
She defended her lineup identification, focusing on Spaziano's eyes.
"They are evil," she said.
Sharpe introduced testimony from DiLisio and information about Spaziano's
knife and the dark-colored truck he had owned.
Kirkland pounced on a rape test conducted by Dr. Guillermo Ruiz a few hours
after the girl was found. He said it showed the girl did not have sex during the
prior 24 hours. Sharpe argued the test showed only that no sperm were present.

Kirkland also dismissed DiLisio as an "acid-head freak."
But a major issue - subject of later appeals - was tattoos. Kirkland focused
on the girl's story that she never saw tattoos on the attacker she said was
Spaziano.
Kirkland never put on testimony about the biker's many tattoos. Therefore,
jurors were told not to consider what they saw when Spaziano rolled up his shirt
sleeves during the trial.
The defense lawyer later said he misunderstood a judge's ruling about the
issue but that argument failed to persuade appeal judges.

On the third day. attorneys moved to closing arguments.
On DiLisio, Sharpe argued:
"He is the strongest reason in this case, outside the facts and the physical
evidence and the emotional evidence that the victim has given. Tony DiLisio's
testimony corroborates her story. We have a second person who can say he did it.
That's strong evidence."

It took jurors more than seven hours to find Spaziano guilty of forcible
carnal knowledge, or rape, and aggravated battery. Orange Circuit Judge Peter de
Manio gave him life in prison plus five years.
One juror and the judge said they didn't remember DiLisio or his testimony.
Both said they believed the young woman's story.
 "The way she described the events, it seemed she told the truth," said juror
Renie Weaver, 64, of Orlando. "She wouldn't get up there in public and go
through that if she was not telling the truth, especially with the kind of
people she was dealing with."
Another juror, Aurelle Bailey, 80, of Orlando said she believed DiLisio at
the trial but would have convicted Spaziano without him.

 At his sentencing, Spaziano turned to fellow bikers in the courtroom and
muttered, "Get him, kill him," according to media members and several
bailiffs.
The target of the threat was unclear. but Sharpe later received phone threats
at his office against him and his brother. Sharpe said police started checking
his house after bikers gathered one day across from his longwood home.

"I sat through the trial. The men's an animal," said de Manio, now an
attorney in Sarasota. "I have no doubt" about his guilt.


Key witness recants story
-------------------------
Five months after the rape verdict. Spaziano was in court again. This time he
was on trial in the killing of hospital clerk Harberts. DiLisio testified
about bodies at a dunp. A jury found Spaziano guilty of first-degree murder.
In July 1976, Seminole Circuit Judge Robert McGregor used the rape conviction
as a reason to give Spaziano the death penalty.

But last June, DiLisio recanted his testimony, telling The Miami Herald he
was manipulated by overzealous police. He later said his overbearing father
wanted to frame the biker for raping his wife. Spaziano calls it an affair.
DiLisio repeated his recantation during the six-day hearing in January.
Prosecutors argued that DiLisio was lying out of fear of the Outlaws. But
Circuit Judge O.H. Eaten Jr. ordered a new trial. Prosecutors are appealing that
decision.
In Orange County, prosecutors will fight much of the same battle Seminole
prosecutors fought in the murder case.

"We feel our conviction is based on solid ground even without Mr. DiLisio.
And on behalf of the people of Florida, we resent the implications (that are)
re-victimizing the victim," said Chief Assistant State Attorney Bill Vose.
Former defense lawyer Hello said both of Spaziano's convictions were flawed.
"I am as certain that he didn't rape (the woman) as I am that he didn't kill
Laura Lyn Harberts. " Hello said. "The rape case was the only reason why the
murder case became a death (penalty) case."

The Orange County battle will be tougher for Spaziano. while DiLisio was the
star witness in the murder case, he played second fiddle to the young woman at
the rape trial. She is prepared to testify in any new trial, prosecutors said.
Also, re-examination of the Harberts murder brought out new details in the
rape case.

Convicted murderer and former Outlaw Ralph "Lucifer" Yannotta, who was in
prison with Spaziano in early 1976, testified at the January hearing that
Spaziano talked about a women he raped, stabbed in the eye with a pencil and
left for dead.

And Fauss, now an accountant, told the Sentinel in December that Spaziano had
added to and altered his tattoos after fleeing Orlando and the rape
investigators.

Hello, who has championed Spaziano for 13 years, said Spaziano is hopeful
the rape conviction will end up like the death sentence.
"Given what happened in January, he thinks anything is possible," said Hello,
now a Vermont Law school professor. "He wants to come up and paint my house."

From:  THE ORLANDO SENTINEL ,  May 5, 1996 Sunday

Feb. 10, 1974: A 16-year-old Orlando high school student is stabbed, raped end
left for dead in a Lockhart field. She survived and identified Spaziano as her
attacker.

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