If Looks Could Kill (36 page)

Several issues needed to be resolved before Cynthia’s trial could begin. Number one on Mike Carroll’s list was the notion that Cynthia had funneled what Carroll now publicly called “hush money” into John Zaffino’s defense team. If that were true, Cynthia’s attorneys, Carroll argued before the court, were going to be called as witnesses during the trial, thus relinquishing their right to represent her. Conflict of interest didn’t begin to explain what Carroll thought of the behavior. Aiding Carroll was Summit County chief assistant prosecutor Mary Ann Kovach. She was competent and experienced, not to mention well-versed in both the Zaffino and George cases. The two together, many said, were unbeatable.

Mike Bowler told the judge during a hearing on the matter that the payments were part of a “common legal strategy used when two people are suspected of the same crime.”

To the dismay of many, the court agreed. On March 5, Judge Cosgrove ruled that Bowler and Meeker could, in fact, remain on board Cynthia’s defense train, which was growing into a Buckeye State version of the dream team. More than that, Cosgrove’s decision made it clear that the prosecution couldn’t call the lawyers as witnesses. If Mike Carroll and his office wanted to look into charging the lawyers with misconduct, they could always pursue those charges later. “[Courts have to examine] where an adverse party may try to call an opposing lawyer as a witness simply to disqualify that lawyer,” Judge Cosgrove said in her ruling, “thus creating an unfair tactical advantage, or to harass opposing counsel.”

It was a blow to the state’s case, for sure. Still, Carroll and Kovach were confident. By the middle of March, as both sides began preparing motions and arguments, Bonnie Zack, on behalf of herself and Ashton, filed a wrongful death suit against the George estate. In the suit, Bonnie’s lawyers claimed that “four months after John Zaffino was convicted, the Georges moved $2 million in property located in Medina County into a privately held trust in order to avoid paying any damages that might arise from a lawsuit.”

It seemed money was changing hands as though people were playing a game of Monopoly. Bonnie was overwhelmed that the Georges would go to such lengths. It showed where their mind-set was heading into Cynthia’s trial—or perhaps had been all along.

By November 11, 2005, both teams of attorneys had fought it out in court over moving the trial because of pretrial publicity, allowing the telephone calls Zaffino made from prison and just about every minor matter one could think of pertaining to making the trial a fair balance for both sides. After a few days had been spent questioning a long list of potential jurors, at the last minute, in a move that would surprise many, Cynthia waived her right to a jury trial and opted instead to have her case tried in front of the judge.

The news stunned the community. “We just didn’t feel we could get a fair and impartial jury in this county,” Bob Meeker told the
Akron Beacon Journal
after the agreement was reached. “Despite people seeming to be promising that they would make every effort, we just felt they were tainted so severely by this extensive publicity, so many news articles and so many news reports, that it was just asking more than a jury could fairly do.”

It was a risky, albeit unorthodox move, to say the least. One person—a judge, mind you—was going to decide Cynthia’s fate. For a trial with such a high-profile status surrounding it to be decided by a judge was rare. Defendants seldom chose this route. More than any of that, however, appeals courts hardly ever challenged a verdict made by a judge, simply because a judge is thought to have a better understanding of the due process and weigh the balance of justice on a much more impartial scale. In theory, Cynthia George was better off with a twelve-man/woman panel, even if one or two held on to a bias. The idea that her lawyers could convince a judge far more easily than a jury, however, won out. Cynthia’s life was in the hands of another woman—a judge with a strong track record for running her courtroom with the respect, honor and integrity the scales deserved.

On November 14, 2005, Cynthia sat and listened to opening arguments in the
State of Ohio
v.
Cynthia George
. Mike Bowler wasn’t going to try to paint Cynthia as some sort of golden girl, a sitcom mom, free from any problems in life. He wanted to explain to the judge exactly how he saw it. Talking about the month after Cynthia and Jeff Zack split up, Bowler said, “At this point, she didn’t have a problem with Zack anymore. The relationship was over because Cindy George took steps in her life to end the relationship. She was gaining strength. The plan was working and she could feel good about it.”

Those who knew the case sat in utter disbelief of the statement. Many saw the split between Zack and Cynthia as anything but amicable.

Bowler said nothing of Ed George’s calls to the APD, insisting that his wife was being harassed. If the breakup had gone so well, so fluid and problem-free, why was Jeff Zack having a hard time letting go? Why was Cynthia stressing over not being able to get rid of him? And why, for crying out loud, had she changed her telephone number and canceled all of her e-mail accounts?

None of it made any sense.

Bowler blamed Cynthia’s adulterous behavior on Ed George’s seemingly workaholic nature, claiming the restaurateur was rarely around and, in effect, not there for his wife when she needed him. The bottom line for Bowler was, what would Cynthia’s motive be if, by chance, she’d had something to do with the crime?

There was none, he insisted. “She had no need to. She had no want to,” Bowler said near the conclusion of what amounted to about fifty minutes.

Mike Carroll had a different view of Cynthia George. For the past four years, he believed that she’d had a major hand in Jeff Zack’s demise—that is, she had masterminded the plot to kill him. “My goal,” Carroll told me later, “was to present the same exact case I had put on for Zaffino. There was no difference to me…. Murder’s a dirty business. I was determined to prove that.”

Mimicking his opening statement during the Zaffino trial, almost word for word, Carroll said, “Cindy George had a problem in her life. That problem was Jeff Zack, and she solved that problem through John Zaffino.”

Whereas Carroll spent an ample amount of time telling the judge that the telephone records between Cynthia and Zaffino detailed a concerted murder plot, Bowler disagreed vehemently, claiming, “The phone records don’t come close to saying what the prosecutor said they say. There is
no
evidence of what was said.”

It was a valid point. Records of telephone calls and their length certainly couldn’t explain what was said during each of those calls. It was pure speculation on the state’s part. Don’t assume they discussed murder—prove it with
evidence
.

During the opening testimony, Mike Carroll put Mary Ann Brewer on the stand and had her explain to the judge what went on inside the George household on a normal—if it could be called such—day, especially after Cynthia’s affair with Jeff Zack supposedly ended. Through that testimony, it was clear Cynthia was scared of ending the relationship with Zack. “She told me she has to put up with him,” Brewer said. “‘I have to see him,’ [Cindy] said. ‘You don’t understand. He said he would take my child with him to Israel.’”

It was Cynthia’s main motive for murder, according to the prosecution: Cynthia’s secret love child would be exposed to the world if Jeff Zack decided he wanted custody—or worse, kidnapped the child and took off to Israel with her.

Like she had during the Zaffino trial, Brewer said she was “unclear” whether Ed knew of the affair or that one of his children had been fathered by another man.

“Ed didn’t understand why there were so many hang-up calls to the house,” Brewer told the judge.

Next up were Bonnie and Elayne Zack.

When Mike Carroll asked Bonnie if she knew of the love child, Bonnie retorted, “I went into complete shock. I just felt like I was hit.”

Elayne discussed the secretly recorded telephone call she made to Cynthia in the days after her son was murdered. And for the next several witnesses, the case moved along at breakneck speed, Carroll calling a list of witnesses nearly identical to those he called during Zaffino’s trial, painting a picture of Cynthia’s affair with Zack, showing the judge how Cynthia wanted to end the affair but was being, basically, harassed by Jeff Zack.

All of it, Carroll insisted, added up to murder.

During the next few days, Nancy Forrest sat and told the judge how her ex-husband showed up at her house with the bike in the middle of the night, and then a bank official testified to the trail of money allegedly tying Cynthia and Zaffino to the purchase of the bike.

Bowler and Meeker did their best to poke holes in each witness’s testimony. Although Cynthia had left what the prosecution was calling a paper trail of her relationship with Zaffino that juxtaposed with the murder of Jeff Zack, it was mere speculation and theory. None of it proved Cynthia conspired with Zaffino. All it proved was that Zaffino and Cynthia had contact.

Many of the state’s witnesses had already been through one trial and were sharp and direct with their words. Christine Todaro walked in and seemed to be stronger than she had ever been, undoubtedly a bit more confident due to the fact that her ex-husband was sitting in prison. The two park rangers further tightened the noose by telling their stories of finding Zaffino roaming through the woods, waiting for his girlfriend, and the mushroom hunter finding a gun in the same general region where Zaffino had been seen. Both rangers’ testimony was further lifted by the fact that Mike Carroll presented blowups of the telephone records proving how many times—and for how long—Cynthia and Zaffino spoke on that day and night.

But again, all Carroll could prove was that Zaffino and Cynthia—or, more to the point, their cell phones—had communicated.

On Monday, November 21, Mike Carroll played a tape of a telephone call between Zaffino and a relative, which had been recorded on April 5, 2003. Zaffino must have known the conversations were being recorded. During the call, he told this person to let his “friends” know that he needed to get out of jail on bond. If they don’t understand what he means, Zaffino said, they will “lose their freedom…. They’ve just put two-and-a-half million dollars in[to] their restaurant,” he said rather frankly, with a cold, threatening chill in his voice, “while
I’ve
been in
jail
.”

People in the courtroom gallery were taken aback by the calls. Without coming out and saying as much, it certainly seemed as if there had been a conspiracy between Cynthia and Zaffino that he was ready to talk about anytime he felt Cynthia wasn’t keeping up her end of a bargain they had possibly made.

For the most part, Cynthia seemed relaxed during the trial. She had even managed to laugh during portions of testimony and smile as witnesses identified her after being asked to point her out by Mike Carroll. She came across as cocky, though, which didn’t sit well with some. She was above the law, at least it seemed that way as she grimaced and smirked and walked with her head high as she came to and from the courtroom. Ed George was there in the courtroom to support his wife, sitting once again next to his and Cynthia’s oldest daughter. Ed and Cynthia made eye contact on occasion and embraced for everyone to see, appearing as a happily married couple.

Nothing seemed to bother Cynthia as she watched and listened to her adulterous life unfold in public. Yet, what was coming next would be cause for Cynthia to want to curl up in a ball and hide underneath the oak table where she was sitting. Because Mike Carroll had some rather squalid, shocking evidence to present to the judge—which had not been part of Zaffino’s trial.

There’s a saying: never put in writing what you don’t want the world to read. Cynthia George had obviously not heard of this age-old proverb. Because every letter she had written to John Zaffino after his arrest became public record as Mike Carroll began introducing the letters as evidence. According to the letters, Cynthia was still in love with John Zaffino and couldn’t bear to live without him. She wrote “how sorrowful” she had felt for her lover. The letter was dated a few weeks after Zaffino’s conviction. She said her “heart aches for” him “every day.”

The laughing, smiling, walking in and out of the courtroom as if she didn’t have a care in the world, were temporarily over for Cynthia George. As excerpts from letters she wrote to her lover were read into the record, Cynthia bowed her head and cried into a tissue.

The letters were obtained in 2004, when the CAPU served a search warrant to a Zaffino relative. This person had collected all of the letters for Zaffino. A match and some gasoline would have probably saved Cynthia a lot of embarrassment, but something told investigators and the prosecution that Zaffino had held on to the letters as some sort of insurance policy. In one, Cynthia wrote how her “days” after Zaffino’s conviction started with visits to her local church “every morning.” In church, she sat and prayed during “a mass…offered” in Zaffino’s name. She said she began her morning by lighting one candle for him and a second for his son. “They burn throughout the day….” At night, Cynthia wrote, if she couldn’t sleep, she would think about the candles “burning” as she quietly read excerpts from her Bible, drifting piously to sleep.

In his telephone calls during the same time period the letters were written, Zaffino seemed to give the impression that he was getting impatient with the Georges. Had Cynthia ladled on the charm in order to keep Zaffino quiet? Her letters seemed to say as much, as well as a look into the mind of a woman torn between reality, a perpetual counterfeit bond and devotion to Christianity, along with a touch of pure narcissism. She claimed she wanted to meet and speak with Zaffino, adding, “if only a few words,” but insisted that they both must “listen to counsel.”

God,
Cynthia wrote in one,
was working through them.
She wanted Zaffino to “pray for wisdom.” Then, perhaps giving the state its most damaging piece of evidence, Cynthia wrote Zaffino,
We cannot make one mistake.

When Dave Whiddon first got hold of the letters and sat down to read them, he was amazed by the candor Cynthia displayed. He believed much of what she wrote was her way of keeping Zaffino in order, dangling on puppet strings. If she could have, Whiddon said, Cynthia George would have immediately written John Zaffino off when he was arrested. “But she had to make sure he didn’t say anything.”

The gallery sat in stunned silence as Cynthia’s words, which she had to have believed would stay private, echoed throughout the day as the letters became part of the record.
We will never loose
[sic]
contact,
she wrote.
We are still steadfast.
Then she talked about building “strength in each other.” In what could be classified as an example of purple prose, she wrote,
[The] storm is quite great and devastating, but plant your feet and dig.

The second letter was weighed down by several Bible passages and references to Jesus Christ. It was rather strange for some to hear a woman quote Scripture to a guy who was perhaps as far removed from God as an atheist. Cynthia spoke of how “difficult” it was for her to make it through a day knowing that Zaffino was locked up. She thanked him for making a “difference” in her life, before writing she missed him and
all your stuborn
[sic]
, bullheaded, pigheaded ways.

According to Cynthia, Zaffino had written to her saying he cried himself to sleep most nights with the thought of never “seeing” her again. She referred to herself in her letters as the most
gentle, levelheaded, patient, funloving, wonderful
and
humble
person
in the whole wide world.
But she wrote about Zaffino as the most
obstinent
[sic]
, cantancerous
[sic]
, stubborn, strongest person
she had
ever met.

Johnie, Johnie, Johnie, Johnie, I worry so about you….

Here was a side of Cynthia George no one had seen. She came across as a love-swept teenager, begging for the love of a man she claimed to be—without coming out and saying—her soul mate.

Many had to wonder what Ed George thought as he sat and listened to the letters his wife had written to her lover as they were presented in court for the entire community to hear. But Ed wasn’t talking. Instead, he continued to stand by his bride and support her.

After the letters were read, Detective Vince Felber took the stand to tell his version of investigating the case. Felber’s perspective was a good representation of the case. He and Whiddon had basically taken over a majority of the investigation as it shifted from Zaffino to Cynthia. Some later said Felber had become “obsessed” with the case and couldn’t get his mind around anything else.

But none of this changed Felber’s expert investigating skills and how much he had contributed to the case. Without Felber, many agreed, the cases against Zaffino and Cynthia George would have never materialized.

After Felber, the testimony moved the case back to how Jeff Zack called Cynthia obsessively in the weeks after she told him the relationship was over. Zack and Cynthia had talked a lot on the telephone, but nothing compared to how much Zaffino and Cynthia had. In total, Mike Carroll presented evidence that suggested Zaffino and Cynthia talked between 1,000 and 5,300 minutes per month. Keeping score, averaging it out, they spoke on the phone for approximately fifty hours per month.

In the end, the state had presented a carbon copy of the Zaffino case and felt it was enough to convict Cynthia.

Shortly before lunch on Tuesday, November 22, Mike Carroll rested the state’s case, confident the judge was going to see how intimately Cynthia George was involved in the planning and plotting of Jeff Zack’s murder. After all, Cynthia’s defense presented little evidence to suggest otherwise—that perhaps Zaffino acted on his own behalf because he was a jealous lover, which was, legal experts agreed, Cynthia’s best chance at freedom. John Zaffino had been brought from prison to the court in case he wanted to testify at the last minute. But he refused. Without Zaffino backing Cynthia up, or testifying against her, some thought she was going to walk.

As the day ended, Bob Meeker and Mike Bowler addressed the press outside the courtroom. They said they were “unsure” whether to put their client on the stand, but promised to make a decision within the next twenty-four hours.