From: THE ORLANDO SENTINEL December 17, 1995 Sunday, WOMAN RECALLS LIFE AS 'PROPERTY' OF OUTLAW ENFORCER; "I KNOW I'M LUCKY TO BE HERE," SAYS DARCY FAUSS. SHE SAYS SHE KHOUS SPAZIANO IS A KILLER.; By Michael Griffin and Jim Leusner of The Sentinel Staff The woman who Lived 17 months with convicted killer Joseph "Crazy Joe" Spaziano says he was nothing like the pathetic victim of injustice portrayed by Lawyers trying to free him from FLorida's death row. Instead, Darcy Fauss says the dead-eyed biker was an erratic, vicious men who paced the floor night after night, disappeared for hours and often fretted about being executed. Once he returned home bloody. "He would not sleep, and say, 'I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it,' " Fauss said. " 'I'm going to get the electric chair.' " Breaking a 20-year silence about her involvement with Spaziano and the Outlaws motorcycle gang, Fauss told The Orlando Sentinel she knows Spaziano conmitted many crimes, including murder and rape. And she says the Pensecola men whose testimony put Spazieno on death row in 1976 is lying today when he says he barely knew the 5-foot-5-inch biker. Fauss said Tony DiLisio, who now insists that he made up a story about Spaziano showing him the bodies of two deed women, was with her and Spaziano when the biker durped what appeared to be a body in early 1974. After Spaziano's 1975 arrest, Fauss rebuilt her life and has become an accountant. She decided to speak publicly, she said, because of recent claims by Spaziano's supporters that he was framed for the 1973 murder of Orlando hospital clerk Laura Harberts. ALthough Fauss moved in with Spaziano after Harbert's death, she said she heard the biker brag often to DiLisio and other Outlaws about crimes he commi tted. "Joe never did anything alone. That was his nature," Fauss said. "He was always trying to show off what he was doing, especially crimes. He was a Little guy . . . trying to be a big shot." Two decades later, Fauss, 41, is emerging as a key witness in FLorida's effort to execute Spaziano, 50. Her statements to the Sentinel and police, along with those of bikers who turned against the Outlaws starting in the Late 1970s, show Spaziano living a misfit's Life of spontaneous brutality and murder. Spaziano refused to talk to reporters. His attorney, Gregg Thomas of Tanpe, refused to comment Friday. Women were property ------------------- Fauss was alone in November of 1973, a 19-year-old single mother with a deformed baby, little money and no place to go. Fleeing a relationship with the father of her child - a men she describes as addicted to heroin - Fauss said yes when Spaziano offered to let her and her son live rent-free in his parents' Altamonte Springs duplex. She had grown up in Lockhart, north of Orlando, and knew Spaziano from past surmers as the charming, clownish biker who hit on girls and sold pot and pills. A "goofball" whose antics matched his nickname, he ate mashed potatoes with his fingers. But only minutes after the duplex door closed behind her, the clown's facade vanished and Fauss found herself immersed in the hidden life of the Outlaws. "This was the beginning of the end," Fauss said. Life inside the duplex stunned her. She watched in horror as Spaziano argued with a huge Outlaw. She tried to comfort a teen-age girl terrified that she would be killed if she didn't earn money as a prostitute that night. Fauss said the girl disappeared hours Later and never returned for her belongings. That was when Spaziano told Fauss the real reason for his kindness: She was to be his slave, a piece of property forced to earn money for him and the Out Laws. "I thought, 'Oh God, I really screwed this up,' " Fauss said. " 'I really made a bad move here.' " The next day Spaziano locked Fauss and her baby in the covered bed of his pickup and drove to Hollywood, north of Miami. Fauss' son, who had been born with clubbed feet, had just had surgery and his tiny legs were in casts. Spaziano had to drop off the other Outlaw - David Coble, a giant of a man his fellow bikers nicknamed "Tall Paul." But Spaziano made it clear there was another reason for the trip. Fauss was to see how Outlaw women were treated. They wound up in back of a seedy bar, in a parking Lot filled with Outlaws. Women were being bought, sold and traded in front of her eyes. "That's where they take (expletive) that don't want to do what we want them to do," she recalls Spaziano telling her. "And some you don't see again. Joe said don't ever ask any (expletive) questions. Just keep your mouth shut." Over the next several months, she said she was forced to dance at topless clubs in Orlando - the Other Door, Evil People and the Inferno. Outlaws supplied girls. frequented the bars and often acted as bouncers. She quickly learned the rules of Outlaw old Ladies: As property, they were far less important to a biker than his Harley-Davidson. If they disobeyed, they could be beaten, gang-raped by club members or even killed. As did other old Ladies, Fauss wore an Outlaws' denim vest. Hers was emblazoned with the words "Property of Crazy Joe." "I was his moneymaker, I was his property," Fauss said. "That's what he always said. 'What's yours is mine, and what's mine is mine - including your son.' " The biker Lifestyle ------------------- Fauss' tales of abuse mirror those disclosed in several federal racketeering cases in FLorida. FBI agent Bob Brown, an Outlaws expert, said the gang routinely exploited women as dancers and prostitutes. Many women were raped and killed. "It was an uncontrovertible fact that this went on," Brown said. "It was proven several times over." For example, a 1989 case against South FLorida Outlaws club president James "Big Jim" Nolan revealed that the club once kidnapped a Daytona Beach woman, tortured her by burning her breasts with a hot spoon and then gang-raped her. By the next day, she was dancing at a topless bar. Similar stories arose in federal prosecutions of Outlaws in Jecksonville and Tampa. Many key witnesses in all these cases have been women and bikers who escaped the club. It did not take Fauss long to discover another Outlaws' tenet - hatred of blacks. Once she danced for a black man at the Inferno, and an Outlaw told Crazy Joe. He gave her a choice of punishment: "pull a train," Outlaw vernacular for a gang rape, or be punched by five club members. Fauss accepted what she thought was the Lesser punishment: She dutifully sat on the edge of her bed and allowed the bikers to take turns punching her in the face. All the while, Fauss could hear her baby crying in the next room. "It didn't take me but one day to get biker-smart," Fauss said, bristling at the suggestion she was Speriano's girlfriend. "He knew where my family lived. I had no car, no job. and I had to worry about baby formula. "I wasn't there by choice." --------------------------- Although Fauss hated the biker lifestyle, Spaziano loved it. An outcast because of his appearance - a car had struck him in the mid-1960s, paralyzing the Left side of his face - he joined the Outlaws because they accepted him for what he was. "In a motorcycle club, it is Like a family. We are all brothers," Spaziano said in a 1976 pre-sentencing interview with court officials. "We trust each other. We defend each other. We support each other when in trouble or whatever." Fauss said Spaziano cared deeply for the daughter of his former wife, whom he divorced in 1972 after a 2 1/2 -year marriage. Because the child lived with her mother in Hollywood, Fauss said she thinks he projected that love onto her son. "Joe really had a soft spot for kids," Fauss said. "I don't know how many times it saved my Life." A constant companion -------------------- Today, 38-year-old Tony DiLisio scoffs at the idea that a biker would have shown him two bodies at a Serninole County dunp. This change of story, which repudiates his trial testimony of 20 years ago, is Spaziano's best hope of getting out of prison. "He (Spaziano) wouldn't hang out with a 14-year-old kid. Why would he?" DiLisio said in June. "Those are just Lies." But Fauss said DiLisio and Spaziano were together constantly in the months she lived with the Outlaw in Orlando - often riding with Spaziano when he picked her up from her topless dancing jobs. "Tony was a wannabe Outlaw, just a kid trying to impress Joe, trying to inpress the Outlaws, trying to impress his dad," Fauss said. "Joe was his main man. Tony was always with him." And Tony was not the only DiLisio with ties to the Outlaws. Authorities say his sister, Anna DiLisio Hotaling, once lived with Donald "Tony Z" Zwierkowski, an Outlaw compatriot of Spaziano's. A 1981 FBI wiretap of Wolan revealed that the club hoped to persuade DiLisio, who was in hiding, to recant in time for a Spazieno appeel of the Harberts' murder conviction. "(Zwierkowski's) living with his sister," Yolan told former Chicago Outlaw Jim Dunaway. "We were trying to find (Zwierkowski) to get ahold of this (expletive) broad to get ahold of her brother to get back there, you know, and change his testimony." DiLisio's brother Ralph, now a Connecticut police officer, said Spaziano frequented the DiLisio home and business in Maitland and was close to Tony. Tony's friends agree. --------------------- Gary Mottola told The Orlando Sentinel in September that he recalled speaking to DiLisio 20 years ago, after the teen had stepped out of Spaziano's truck. The teen was frantic and upset, explaining that Spaziano had just shown him some dead bodies. Mottola said. Mottola, 38, also said that DiLisio's father, Ralph Sr., received threats on Anna's life if any of the famiLy helped police. "They sent letters to Mr. DiLisio saying if this ever got out, they'd mail his (Tony's) sister's head home in a box," Mottola said. Mottola has since moved, changed his phone number and apparently is hiding. At least one other DiLisio friend says the teen told others the same thing - Long before police ever questioned DiLisio in any rape or murder probe of Spaziano. A body in a bag --------------- Fauss said she went along when DiLisio and Spaziano dunped something "that looked like a body wrapped in plastic" in Late 1973 or early 1974. It was about 2 e.m. on a bright, cold night. DiLisio and Spaziano picked Fauss up at work. This time, though, there was a purse in the car, its contents spilled across the seat and floor. She asked whose purse it was. Spaziano told her to mind her own business. The trio drove to an orange grove off old U.S. Highway 441 north of Orlando - an area Fauss knew well because she had grown up nearby. "I was getting scared. He stopped the truck and parked end said, 'Don't get out end don't look back,' " Fauss said, but she Looked through the driver's side mirror anyway. "I saw something thrown over Joe's right shoulder. It looked like a green plastic bag. . . . I was freaking out." The object obviously was heavy because Spaziano had difficulty heaving it over his shoulder. "It was a body. I froze," Fauss said. "To me, it was a lifetime. It was maybe five minutes." She said Spaziano and DiLisio disappeared into the grove and returned to the truck. As they drove home, Spaziano and DiLisio made small talk. She said no one mentioned the incident again. Fauss said she told the story this surmer to the FLoride Department of Law Enforcement, who reinvestigated elements of the Harberts' killing before Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a fifth death warrant for Spaziano in August. She also said she told the story to Seminole County investigators, who are preparing for next month's hearing on DiLisio's change of story. Neither the FDLE nor Seminole County prosecutors would talk about Fauss or her statements. DiLisio could not be reached for comnent. His attorney. Kelly ncCraw, did not return messages. Despite her certainty today about the incident, the story conflicts with hypnosis-induced testimony Fauss gave in 1976. When pieced in a trance by Joe mcCawley, who also hypnotized DiLisio to elicit his testimony in the Harberts' case, Fauss said she and Spaziano were alone when the body was dumped. Fauss testified that a man named Ronnie, a worker at an Orlando motorcycle shop, was with Spaziano when he picked her up from work, but they dropped him off before going to the grove. "We went by Fat Bob's Cycle Shop and dropped him off," Fauss said then. "They were Laughing and carrying on . . . carrying on as we were driving down the road." At the grove, Fauss said, Spaziano got out of the truck, removed what she thought was a body end walked off. She said she then did as Spaziano had instructed: drove down the dirt road, turned the truck around and shut off the headlights. She waited five minutes before driving back. "He was stooped down and when he saw me coming and he was sure it was me, he came out to the car, to the truck," Fauss told the hypnotist. *He told me to drive, so I drove home." Fauss has no explanation for the discrepancy about DiLisio, except that during the session with mcCawley she might have mixed together reality with a cover story Spaziano later drilled into her memory. Questions about the accuracy of hypnosis-induced testimony led the FLorida Supreme Court to ban it in 1985. "I remember it now as I remember it." Fauss said. "I sat in the middle of the seat between Joe and Tony." Despite the inconsistencies, Fauss directed police to the spot. This was before she had been hypnotized. Orange County investigators say it is where they found the body of Karen DuPuis, who had disappeared from the Orlando Toug Women's Christian CLub on Jan. 17, 1974. Her stabbed and mutileted body had been found Feb. 1, 1974. Two years Later, Faus took police to the same spot - a few miles from where Harberts' body had been found, six months earlier, just across the Senrinole County Line. Kept his victims' teeth ----------------------- Orange Courty sheriff's Sgt. Dan Nazarchuk said Spaziano is the prime suspect in that killing and that of a woman in her 50s named June Kennedy, who disappeared near her home in downtown Orlando. She was found stabbed to death on Jan. 5, 1974, also a few miles from Harberts' body. Investigators have never conclusively connected these Orange County deaths to Spaziano. But Long before the current controversies, other Outlaws said Crazy Joe was a kiLLer. In a 1978 statement to Orange County deputy sheriffs, then-president of the Orlando Outlaws chapter, Dale "Brackett" Webb, said Spaziano admitted in early January 1974 to stabbing an unidentified person. He also said Spaziano once mentioned during a ride through Orlando in early 1974 that he picked up women at the YYCC. Webb gave his statement while in prison for robbery, but his conviction was overturned on appeal and he was released. He later entered the federal witness protection program after cooperating with state investigations of the Outlaws. Also in 1978, two other imprisoned Outlaws - WiLLie "Gatemouth" Edson and Sammie Nail - told Hollywood police and South FLorida investigators that Spaziano bragged about murders. Both were witnesses in the trial of Outlaws boss Holan and also are in the federal witness protection program. In his statement, Edson said Spaziano admitted to killing two people in Chicago on Dec. 31, 1974. Edson also said Spazieno bragged that he once had picked up a male hitchhiker near 0.5. Highway 441 in Orlando, grabbed a hatchet from under the seat and buried it in the man's skull. As Spazieno told the story, Edson said, he was rinsing blood out of his truck. Another time, Edson said, Spaziano picked up a woman hitchhiker in the same area, then shot her in the back when she got out. She screamed so Loudly that he jumped out and stabbed her many times. He was a mile away when he realized he had left his personalized knife in her back. He drove beck, recovered the knife and took the body to an orange grove - his preferred method of disposal, Edson said. Retired Broward County sheriff's Capt. Carl Cerruthers, a motorcycle gang expert for 20 years, said Edson recalled to him how Spaziano would disappear when nervous and agitated, then return later "in a state of euphoria. Whatever his problem was, it was resolved. . . . And he would brag about it to other members. It was understood what he had done." Wail told investigators in 1978 that Spaziano said he disposed of bodies at dumps because it was a "free burial." He also said Spaziano kept teeth from his victims, which he shoved to associates. These statements have languished in files for years, investigators say, because Spaziano was on death row and was no Longer considered important. Given the passage of time, it is unlikely cases could be made on these crimes now. Spaziano caught --------------- On a Feb. 9, 1974, an Orange County woman had survived being raped, choked, slashed across the face and Left for dead in a Lockhert ditch. As the news spread, Spaziano became agitated and nervous, Fauss said. She said she overheard conversations he had with other bikers. "I heard enough to know Joe was part of it," Fauss said, adding that Spaziano repeated his fear that he was going to get the electric chair. Spaziano hurried to tie up loose ends around town, before deciding to hide out with family in Rochester, W.Y. "Joe had Lots of money in the bank," Fauss recalled. "Just before we Left, Tony (DiLisio) went to the bank with us." The couple packed up and went to Wew York, where they hid out with Spaziano's family. While there, Spaziano had heated arguments with his father - and also mentioned in front of his parents that he was "in trouble for murder," Fauss said. They later moved to a cabin Spaziano built on an Outlaw-controlled mountain north of Pittsburgh, briefly stayed with Outlaws in Yongstown, Ohio, and then moved on to Chicago, where Spaziano became a club enforcer. while on the run, Spaziano took precautions to avoid capture. The couple would exit the highvay immediately if they saw a state trooper. If they stayed in a hotel, Fauss used a fake name. At night, she would steel license tags from other cars so Spaziano could put them on his truck. In Youngstown, Fauss said, she spent a day in the public library looking through obituaries of young women. Spaziano hoped to find someone whose identity Fauss could assume. In Chicago, Spaziano had his tattoos altered, Fauss said, adding several to his arms and changing one into a geisha girl. While in Chicago, she said, she also saw Spaziano and other Outlaws torturing a men tied to a chair for two days in her apartment living room. He'd cheated them in a prostitution deal. On April 24, 1975, Spaziano was arrested by Chicago police on a disorderly conduct charge. Chicago Detective Anthony Biongiorno said he used the charge as a way to talk to Spaziano about the killings of a biker and his girlfriend. "We'd heard back then that he did it, so we wanted to haul him in for questions," said Biongiorno. who added that the Orange County rape warrant popped up after they booked Spaziano. "We never got the chance to interview him." Fauss watched out a window as Biongiorno and several officers swooped down to arrest Spaziano. "I can go home for Easter, that was my first thought," Fauss said. "I tried my best to make it look like I was sick about it." After Spaziano's arrest. Fauss said, she returned to FLorida and was contacted by Chicago Outlaws and reminded they knew where she Lived. She said the club ordered her to write "corny" love letters to Spaziano in prison, to bolster his cover story that she was his fiancee. And they fled because someone borrowed his truck to commit a crime. "I had to show that I was loyal to Joe," Fauss said. "I played the role I was ordered to play." Spaziano's and Fauss' lives diverged after his return to FLorida. Despite a courtroom filled with bikers. a jury convicted Spazian, in the brutal rape. After the verdict was read, Spaziano turned to a biker end said calmly. "Get him. kill him." His target was unclear. but the prosecutor and his brother received death threats. Spaziano was sentenced to life plus five years. The next year he was convicted of Harberts' murder and was sentenced to death. As Crazy Joe's focus shifted to rounds of federal and state appeals, Fauss began to turn her life around. She went to college, became a schoolteacher and later an accountant. She has lived a quiet life, keeping her past a secret. Her only thoughts of Spaziano came in nightmares until last surmer, when FLoride Department of Law Enforcement agents knocked on her door. She had escaped the life of prostitution and drug use that had trapped and condemned many Outlaw women. For some reason. Spaziano had kept her out of it. I played the game, I kept my mouth shut, I danced and made money for the club." Fauss said. "I know I'm Lucky to be here." From: THE ORLANDO SENTINEL December 17, 1995 Sunday,
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