Version 9 of the Manuscript "Perfectly Innocent" - Alfred Trenkler

730 Pages·2008·11.51 MB·English

by  Morrison Bonpasse

PERFECTLY INNOCENT

The Wrongful Conviction of Alfred Trenkler

by
Morrison Bonpasse
with
Alfred Trenkler

Manuscript Edition, Copy _____ Version 9, Copy _____
10 October 2007 $20.00
ALFRED TRENKLER INNOCENT COMMITTEE
P.O. Box 870111, Milton Village, MA 02187-0111
www.alfredtrenklerinnocent.org

10 October 2007

Dear Reader of Version 9 of the Manuscript Edition of Perfectly Innocent:

Thank you for reading this book, which is one small step in the effort to find and publicize
the truth about the Roslindale Bomb case. This version is available online, until the next
version is created and an few copies will be printed in looseleaf manuscript form because we
need more time and help to find and present additional facts and truth in this case. Its format
emphasizes our ability to make changes in the book. It is not bound and sealed. One hundred
copies of Version 8 were printed.

The manuscript is the latest version of copies which are being sent to people affected by, or
involved in, the Roslindale Bomb case, including the trials of Tom Shay and Alfred Trenkler.
They are being brought or sent to the families of Jeremiah Hurley and Francis Foley and to the
judges, prosecutors, witnesses and investigators. To the extent possible, they are being
brought or sent to the jurors in both trials. As is noted in Chapter 13, "Campaign for Justice for
Alfred Trenkler," we believe that everyone can help secure justice in this case and that
includes especially those who contributed mistakenly and unknowingly to the wrongful
convictions. In other professions, mistakes are corrected, as they should be here.

The book was written primarily using public documents and newspaper articles, most of
which are available on Alfred's website. As we already had a strong point of view when the
writing began, that Alfred Trenkler was perfectly innocent and Tom Shay, too, it was decided
to complete the manuscript first so that there would be no surprise about the book's
perspective. With manuscript in electronic or hard copy print, we hope that you, the readers,
will now provide feedback which will include additional facts and viewpoints, corrections and
criticisms, too. As much as possible, and unless requested otherwise, that feedback will be
posted on the website verbatim, and then included as faithfully as possible in the book. We
will incorporate that feedback, regardless of where it leads, into the final edition which will
hopefully be published as a commercial book. It is our belief that the truth will set Alfred
Trenkler free, and will clean Tom Shay's record, and we welcome any and all efforts to present
the truth in this case.

Sincerely,

________________________________ ________________________________
Morrison Bonpasse Alfred Trenkler
P.O. Box 390 19377-038
Newcastle, ME 04553-0390 USP Allenwood
207-586-6078 P.O. Box 3000
[email protected] White Deer, PA 17887

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page

Preface 1
Introduction 10

1. Explosion and Death - 28 October 1991 13

2. Early Investigation - 28 October 1991 to 16 April 1992 42

3. U.S. Attorney, Grand Jury and Pre-indictment - 17 April 1992 to
15 December 1992 97

4. Indictment and Pretrial - 16 December 1992 to 8 March 1993 153

5. Pretrial for Thomas A. Shay and Alfred Trenkler - 9 March 1993
to 27 June 1993 176

6. Trial of Thomas A. Shay - 28 June 1993 to 27 July 1993 203

7. Pretrial for Alfred W. Trenkler - 28 June 1993 to 24 October 1993 286

8. Trial of Alfred W. Trenkler - 25 October 1993 to 29 November 1993 313

9. After the Trenkler Verdict: Appeals and Appeals - 30 November 1993
to 30 August 2002 422

10. After the Verdict, Thomas A. Shay: Appeals - 28 July 1993 to the
Present 486

11. Appeals by Alfred Trenkler 31 August 2002 to Present 512

12. Conclusion 531

13. Campaign for Justice for Alfred Trenkler 546

Appendix A: Testimony of Alfred Trenkler 567
Appendix B: Testimony of Thomas A. Shay 605
Appendix C: Who is Who in the Roslindale Bomb web? 623
Appendix D: Assorted Documents 641
1. Drawing by Tom Shay on 31 October 1991 of a remote control device
or bomb. 641
2. The 18 October 1991 Radio Shack Receipt 642
3. 6 May 1992 Letter from Tom Shay to Governor William Weld 643
4. 6 May 1992, Second letter from Tom Shay to Governor William Weld 645
5. Handwritten notes by Tom Shay for 6 and 9 October 1992 Proffer
session with AUSA Paul Kelly, Agents Jeff Kerr and Thomas
D'Ambrosio. (notes annotated by one of the three, and dated 10-15-92) 647
6. Summary of Alfred Trenkler large customer projects 656
7. Toggle Switch Contacts from Roslindale Bomb 660
8. Map of Metropolitan Boston 661
9. ATF Police drawing of houses, driveways, garages on 39 Eastbourne
Street 662
10. Boston Police drawing of 39 Eastbourne closeup 665
11. Drawings [2007] of what the 1991 Roslindale Bomb may have looked like 666
12. Undated 1993 letter from Tom Shay to "Tom" or "Ron." 672

Appendix E: Pre-Resentencing letter sent by the author to Judge Rya Zobel,
19 April 2007 674
1. Letter from Morrison Bonpasse to Judge Rya Zobel dated 19 March
2007, but sent to her 17 April 2007 675
2. Photo of toggle switch contacts of the Roslindale Bomb debris and the
contacts of the Radio Shack #275-602 and Philmore #30-219. (Exhibit A in
letter) 690
3. Preliminary Report of Denny Kline, "Forensic Analysis of Physical
Evidence." (Exhibit A) 691
4. Affidavit of John J. Bowden, 22 April 1998, re: David Lindblom.
(Exhibit B) 693
5. The Patriot Ledger front page article on 7 August 2006 about Tom
Shay and the Trenkler case. (Exhibit C) 696
6. 10 November 1992 Memorandum to File about Tom Shay, by AUSA Paul
Kelly, with Alfred Trenkler comments. (Exhibit D) 701
7. 11 May 1993 letter from AUSA Paul Kelly to Nancy Gertner regarding
statements made by Tom Shay to prosecutors, with Alfred Trenkler
comments. (Exhibit E) 704
8. 17 October 1992 interview by Karen Marinella of Tom Shay, with
Alfred Trenkler comments. (Exhibit F) 707
9. 7 March 2003 Decision by Judge Conaboy in Alfred Trenkler v. Pugh,
in Pennsylvania. (Exhibit G) 723
10. 8 July 2001 Letter from Tom Shay to Chief Hussey of the Boston
Police. (Exhibit H) 725
11.10 September 2001 letter from Asst. U.S. Attorney Kevin McGrath to
Charles Rankin, in response to the Tom Shay letter to Chief Hussey.
(Exhibit I) 726

Index (not in the manuscript editions, but words can searched using an
e-copies of this manuscript, which is available at Alfred's website.)
About the Author 727
PREFACE

"Justice is but Truth in Action"1
Louis D. Brandeis

On 8 March 1994, Alfred Trenkler2 was sentenced to two life terms in Federal
prison for building a bomb in 1991 that killed a Boston policeman and severely
wounded another. The prosecution's theory was that the bomb was intended for
the father of Tom Shay, an acquaintance of Alfred's. Through a series of tragic
mistakes and some lies, Alfred and Tom Shay were wrongly convicted.
On Friday, 24 March 2006, Alfred's half-brother, David Wallace, called me to ask
me to establish a website for Alfred, who, David said, had been wrongly convicted of
building a bomb which killed a Boston police officer. David called me because I
had built a website for Maine's best known wrongfully convicted person, Dennis
Dechaine. David didn't know about my other work for Dennis, and my philosophy
that efforts on behalf of a wrongfully convicted person should be pursued as a
combined educational, legal, political and public relations campaign. Among the
corollaries to that philosophy is the view that every citizen, including the friends
and families of victims, and each former member of a jury, has an obligation to
pursue justice and, when necessary, to correct injustice. I presume, unless proven
otherwise, that everyone, especially members of the law enforcement community,
seeks to fulfill that obligation. It's the work of a campaign for a wrongfully
convicted person to bring to the public's attention the need to correct an injustice;
for if the people do not know about a wrongful conviction, it is less likely to be
corrected. We live in a democracy, and the police, prosecutors and judges do pay
attention to the views of the people. The ever increasing number of exonerations,
most clearly achieved through DNA testing, shows that for too long the police,
prosecutors and judges thought that the public was more interested in punishment
than in justice. With 2 million Americans behind bars, a 1% wrongful conviction
rate would mean that 20,000 innocent people are in U.S. prisons and jails.
David and I met shortly after our telephone call at a restaurant in Bath, Maine,
halfway between our homes, and I began to absorb his vast knowledge about
Alfred's case. It didn't take long to suspect that a gross miscarriage of justice had
occurred and after five weeks, I was 99.9% convinced that Alfred Trenkler was
totally innocent of any involvement in the crimes for which he was wrongfully
convicted.
But what about that .1%? Everyone who works on behalf of a person s/he
believes to be wrongly convicted must wonder, "But what about that .1%?"
Sometimes I think, "but what about what 'X' said, as compared to what Alfred
said?" And following that comes the question, "Could Alfred have done it?" Well,
it's possible, which is why the 99.9% is not 100% - but still very unlikely. Anyway,
that's not the standard to use. For a person to be found guilty and sent to prison,
there must be a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and not whether he
could have done it. He didn't, and there is no piece of convincing evidence that he
did.
Soon, I came to believe that Thomas A. Shay3 is entirely innocent, too, of any
involvement in the building of the 1991 bomb. Given what's related in this book,
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it's very hard to conceive how Thomas A. Shay could have built and placed the
bomb by himself or worked with anyone else. Not impossible, but highly
improbable.
However, he was a free man shortly after I started on this road, and the need to
fully explore his case was less pressing than for Alfred. Tom Shay is now back in
prison for 33 months for violating the terms of his probation. He was excoriated in
the newspapers for his conduct while on probation, but the government's
conviction of an innocent man trumps those mistakes. Were there no wrongful
conviction, there would have been no probation and no probation violations. He
has read this manuscript and provided helpful clarifications and careful
proofreading edits, and has completed his "Testimony" in Appendix B.
The website, www.alfredtrenklerinnocent.org, was initiated in early April, 2006,
about the same time as began my weekly one or two fifteen-minute phone calls
with Alfred. Although neither of us noted the milestone at the time, the total time
of our conversations passed the 8.5 hour mark some time in September. That was
longer than the total length of time Alfred Trenkler was in the presence of Tom
Shay, in the summer of 1991, and twice as long as the total length of their
conversational time.
Fortunately for me, and hopefully Alfred too, my relationship with Alfred has gone
forward and we have become close friends. Alfred's acquaintance with Tom Shay
did not go further than those few hours, mostly spent listening to music on the car
radio, and that is one of the core facts of this book that the jury did not
understand. The acquaintance was short and short-lived.
Until Alfred's 4 April 2007 resentencing I had not had the privilege of meeting
him face-to-face because of a Bureau of Prisons rule which forbids visits to inmates
by friends if such friendships did not precede the inmate's incarceration. The
irrationality of the rule becomes apparent when one considers the likely circles of
friends of most inmates before their incarceration. The Allenwood warden,
Jonathan Miner, is permitted by the Rule to allow exceptions to the friends'
visitation prohibition when consistent with the security and good order of the
prison, but he has chosen, so far, and without further explanation, to affirm his
subordinates' decisions. As this book is being written, the denial stands, despite
my and Alfred's efforts.
This isn't the place to present a detailed chronology of my efforts since then,
which have included requests to my Congressman, Tom Allen. Suffice to say that
our efforts have been unsuccessful so far. The effect of the denial of visits has been
to impair the search for truth, and to frustrate the Bureau of Prisons' own stated
goals for visits to inmates which include the maintenance of ties to the outside
community.
Two significant changes in April may persuade Warden Miner to allow me to visit
Alfred. First, he was resentenced to 37 years instead of his previous double-life
term. As it is now probable that Alfred will live to see his release, he now has more
of a need for friends on the outside. Second, while Alfred was in the custody of the
U.S. Marshal Service after his 4 April resentencing, I visited him seven times at the
Donald Wyatt Detention Center in Central Falls, Rhode Island.
Around the world, Amnesty International fights for the ability to obtain access to
forgotten prisoners, and here in the U.S. I'm unable to visit Alfred Trenkler who
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currently gets between two to three visits a year by his family and none, so far,
from any of his friends. No reason for the denial has been given so far, other than
that the Bureau of Prisons has the power to deny my visits, so visits it will deny.
This book is part of the effort to speak truth to power in general, and the effort to
visit Alfred is a rightful part of that effort.
Is it a coincidence that it's been so difficult for me to visit a man who has claimed
his innocence from the beginning? Or does it mean something more intentional is
at work? Generally, as this book shows, in the absence of clear evidence, I try to
see only mistakes and errors where others may see intent and conspiracy; but it
would be naive not to wonder, sometimes.
"Coincidence" is a phenomenon that's much referenced in this book, as you, the
reader, will be asked rhetorically, or will ask yourself, whether the simultaneity of
two or more events was a coincidence, i.e. happening entirely by chance, or
whether there was some human intent involved. I've long been intrigued by the
concept of coincidence and once wrote an essay for a local newspaper in Maine to
capture the coincidences at play upon our purchase of a home in Maine. For
example, it was a coincidence that a family friend from Duxbury, Mass. lived five
houses down the road in Maine from us, and that another neighbor went to college
with my mother. During the writing of this book, we learned that a friend here in
Maine is writing a book about her daughter's correspondence with the Pakistani
who killed a randomly selected motorist who was driving to work in Virginia's
Washington, D.C. suburbs in 1993. The killer was executed and the daughter's
correspondence morphed into a long term correspondence between her mother and
the widow of the Pakistani. The man he killed was a friend of my parents in
Duxbury, where he was a general practitioner M.D. until joining the State
Department and then the CIA.
Sometimes, such coincidences are known as "small world" stories. After Alfred's
resentencing on 4 April 2007, he was in the Metropolitan Detention Center in
Brooklyn, New York where he met a recently sentenced "Ponzi Scheme" operator,
Blake Prater. Alfred soon discovered that Prater was a supporter of a single global
currency, after having read my book, "The Single Global Currency - Common Cents
for the World."
Prior to this year's involvement, I did know two other participants in this story.
At Boston University Law School, I took a legal writing course from Nancy Gertner
from which I remember her positive personality, her dramatic hand gestures, and
the beautiful moonrises over the Charles River basin. She was Tom Shay's
attorney and is now a Federal District Court judge.
I also know my prep school and college classmate, Judge Doug Woodlook, who
was the judge of the David Lindholm case, and who reduced Lindholm's sentence
by 55 months after his incriminating testimony against Alfred Trenkler. At that
time, Doug could not have known the full background of the U.S. Government's
request for a reduced sentence, and I haven't yet determined the best way to bring
it to his attention. Maybe he will read this book. Another prep school classmate
once did a state-funded psychological examination of one of Tom Shay's sisters.
Other acquaintances include a judge at one of Tom Shay's municipal hearings, a
lawyer who participated in Tom Shay's deposition in his father's civil suit, the first
lawyer for Alfred, the art dealer for David Lindholm in the 1980s, and one of the
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U.S. Attorneys for Massachusetts whose name is in several of the appellate filings
in the case. There are not many degrees of separation among the people of Boston
and the people involved in the case, as listed in "Who's Who?" in Appendix C. It's
safe to say that everyone in Boston knows someone who knows at least one one of
those people in Appendix C.
I spent my childhood in Duxbury, and there I and my family knew many friends
of the Wallace family, but we never met until David's call. One family friend of the
Wallaces grew up in Winchester where his parents were the closest friends of my
grandparents, and where it was hoped he or his brother would marry my mother or
one of her sisters. I've since visited his home which previously had been visited by
Alfred and his parents and my mother and her parents.
One coincidental connection that did not occur was that both Alfred and I could
have used the auto body repair services of Thomas L. Shay and his brother Arthur.
The condition of Alfred's 1979 Toyota Celica is described in the book. When Arthur
Shay saw in 2007 the condition of my 1993 Honda Accord with its 579,000 miles,
he said, "I'd like to do some work on your car."
The campaign for the exoneration of Dennis Dechaine began immediately after
his 1989 conviction in Maine for murder. Years of efforts by his dedicated support
group, "Trial and Error," came up short and the campaign languished until the
publication of the book, Human Sacrifice, by James Moore in 2002. A retired ATF
agent, Moore began investigating the Dechaine case as an unpaid volunteer in
June 1992. He began his investigation with the assumption, arising from his ATF
work, that the legal system usually arrests and correctly convicts criminals.
However, he soon realized that the case was badly investigated and prosecuted,
and that Dechaine was very likely innocent. Further investigation into the time of
the victim's death revealed that it likely occurred when Dechaine was being
questioned and in the custody of, or under surveillance by, the police. The
realization confirmed his views about Dechaine's inncoence. Moore relentlessly
sought to obtain the government's documents about the case and every time that
unseen documents were found, and almost literally unearthed, they supported
Dechaine's claims of innocence. Now, Moore and thousands of others are 99.9%
certain of Dennis's total innocence of any involvement in that horrible crime. Still,
Dennis awaits justice in Maine.
I had became involved in "Trial and Error" upon reading Human Sacrifice at the
urging of a friend, Bill Bunting, in early 2002 and have been convinced ever since
of the power of a book to present a coherent view of injustice and to motivate
people to join or support a campaign to correct that injustice.
Thus came the awareness that the campaign for Alfred Trenkler also needed a
book. After the failure of several efforts to find an author for this book, and after
Dennis' encouragement, I decided to start writing it myself.
This edition is called the "Manuscript Edition," meaning that it's the test, or even
trial, edition. It was limited by time and resources, and thus does not show the
benefits of interviews with participants and observers. Instead, it relies almost
entirely upon the written legal record and media reports, and upon correspondence
and short conversations with Alfred. The one or two weekly phone calls with Alfred
are limited to 15 minutes each, so there has not been much opportunity for
extended interviews. As I came to the writing after I had formed most of my
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opinions of the case, interviewees would have been cautious to share with me their
views. Now, however, with the publication of this "Manuscript Edition," potential
interviewees will see what's been written so far and they can contribute to the
search for the truth as they wish. The packaging as looseleaf pages bound in string
should reinforce the perspective that it's a work-in-progress.
There is no hidden agenda. When Joseph McGuiness was asked to write what
became his book about the Jeffrey McDonald case, Fatal Vision, there was an
assumption that he would conclude that McDonald was innocent. However, the
book presented the other view. That will not be the case here unless new evidence
points in that direction, and in the 14 years since Alfred's conviction, the new or
rediscovered evidence has all pointed toward his innocence.
I believe that everything stated in this book as fact is true. Any reader who finds
an inaccuracy, or gap in information, or a need to provide any other feedback, is
welcome to let me know and a correction will be posted on Alfred's website at
www.alfredtrenklerinnocent.org, where the entire "Manuscript Edition" also will
be posted. Changes will be made in the book as soon as possible. After several
months, it's hoped that a more polished and accurate paperback edition will be
published and distributed through normal channels with a planned publication
date of 28 October 2007, 16 years after the Roslindale Bomb explosion.
Corrections are especially welcome, as a major goal of Alfred's campaign for
justice is truth. In my work with Alfred, nothing that I have read by him or that he
has told me has been shown to be false by reference to other reliable sources, such
as documents. Where there are assumptions or deductions, readers are welcome
to weigh them against his/her own, and send me email or U.S. mail.
Copies will be sent to most of the people named in Appendix C, to the extent that
their addresses can be found. Hopefully, some will accept email copies to keep
costs down. Hopefully, too, some people will purchase a "Manuscript Edition"
copy, to assist our efforts. All proceeds from the sale of this manuscript, and
subsequent editions, will go initially to pay for printing costs, with any remaining
balances to go to the Alfred Trenkler Innocent Committee, and its campaign for the
exoneration of Alfred Trenkler and Tom Shay.
Also, it's hoped by circulating these "Manuscript Edition" copies to as many
people as possible, including those who believe that justice already has been done,
that communications can be opened among members of the law enforcement
community, and Alfred's supporters and members of the victims' families. Every
member of each group has a common interest in truth and justice, and the
correction of injustice when they see it.
One of the themes of this book is that the adversarial criminal trial process is not
a good method for determining truth. It is hoped that the writing of this book, and
its subsequent editions, will be more effective in determining that truth, or possible
truths.
The title, Perfectly Innocent, comes from a statement made to the press by Alfred's
lawyer, Terry Segal, in 1992 at Alfred's bizarre arraignment on a bounced check
charge from Rhode Island. He said in reference to the Roslindale Bomb case, "My
client maintains he is perfectly innocent in that matter."4
Of course, many people will find it hard to believe Alfred Trenkler and the
conclusions of this book, but that's not the same as proving that anything written
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