Here is what is mischaracterized as one of the Augie statements, why there is another is a good question. I have not seen it though.
Note the date is the 12th, how would Siegfried, who only started handling the case in December, decide so fast that he needed a statement from Augie, how would he know how to get in touch with Augie and why would Augie appear in his office so quickly?
I suspect that he was not retained until mid December at that but even giving the benefit of the doubt that it was Monday December 2 that Brigante hired Siegfried that would mean he found a way to contact DeGennaro prior to December 12 and found some way of knowing get him in his office.
Augie was not one of the inner circle who hung out together so never interviewed by police. That right there calls into question the claims of him being such a close friend.
The victims were all dead including Dawn so could no tell Siegfried about Augie. If the tale were true only two people could tell Siegfried about Augie's supposed involvement- Ron Jr and Bobby Kelske. The first thing I would do (I am an attorney) is go speak to my client and get his side of events. Siegfried went to visit his client in mid december which suggests he either took or finally started working on the case later in the month.
We are supposed to believe that he learned about Augie and interviewed him prior to his initial interview of his client. This is not very easy to swallow but the tale about the supposed affidavit makes clear it is a forgery and completely worthless.
It is not an affidavit. An affidavit is first person and under oath. If taking an affidavit it would have DeGennaro being the speaker and Siegfried would have his secretary or whoever he had in his office who was a notary notirize it. It was routine to have your legal secretary be a notary to notarize documents. The one writing in first person in this document is Siegfried, thus it represents at best attorney notes. There would be no reaosn for Augie to even sign it, it is worthless except for his own personal use. If going to even bother to have him sign if but not have it notarized I woudl have it say I visited ... Esq on such and such day and told him... the first person would not be me.
The excuse given for the first person being from Siegfried is absurd, "He then planned to depose himself and enter an affirmation of the suppressed statements into the court."
There is no such thing as a lawyer deposing himself to get hearsay statements entered into evidence. This proves someoen who understands nothign at all about law made up this garbage. You get evidence entered through testimony. You call the person as a witness and try to get them to admit they came to your office and stated such things. If the person denies it a lawyer can't testify that they were told something, it is hearsay. You need to impeach a witness with other evidence not a lawyer claiming the person told them something.
So the very reason given for such document to be created is a farce.
Even if simply attorney notes, the lawyer would want to include as much contact information as possible to establish the identity. Here we have no address and no phone number simply places around NYC. If he didn't know his address or phone number and he refused to provide it how did he get in touch with Augie in the first place and get him to come to his office? We are supposed to believe that Augie contacted him on his own to tell him that he was there at the time of the murders and was solicited to commit murder? Why would Augie come forward with such on his own at all if refusing to give him address and ready to deny it if anyone asked? If the tale in the Night The DeFeo's Died were true Augie was guilty of conspiracy to commit murder at the very least. Why would he come forward and put himself at risk of prosecution?
His name is not even spelled right and is spelled two different ways Augusto and Augosta instead of Augustine and DeGennaro was spelled Degenaro. He supposedly signed it but his signature conveniently is redacted. If he didn't want to give the correct spelling of his name why would he give his name at all? In that case he would give a false name entirely not one very close to his own. The mispellings also prove that no ID was provided to prove who he was or they would know how to spell his name and his address. That means anybody oculd have shown up, claimed to have been Augie Degennaro and Siegfried would have no way of knowing if he really was or not.
But this is all made up entirely there is no doubt about that a tall. Aside from being absurd on its face and the other problems these documents are not in the court file, not in the legal file sent to Weber and were never investigated or used by either defense counsel.
1) Court file
Allegedly Siegfried filed a motion to have himself deposed in order to get the this and other statements into evidence but the court denied the motion. If that were true then the documents would have been filed with the court. Motion documents are made part of the court file. They are not part of the court file and the reason why is because there is no such motion in existence. Not only was such motion never made there is no such thing as such a motion. "Two days later, in a supplemental disclosure request, Siegfried motioned the court to allow the affirmations."
A disclosure request is a request for the other side to disclose documens or information. There is no such thing as a disclosure request to get something admitted into evidence. The fight of what arguments and evidence will be used at trial is determined after trial is scheduled not before (the trial was not scheduled till much later) and certainly not in a discloure request. Moreover, he had the actual witnesses to call at trial if desired so there would be no need to resort to docuemnts at all anyway and there are extremely limited circumstances even when witnesses are not available in which such statements can come in. His recourse would be to call the individuals at trial if he wanted to get any testomony from them in.
So we know for sure that it was a LIE that a motion was made to get such docuemnts into evidence and the supposed reaosn for their creation a LIE on top of all the other problems.
2) Legal file
If Siegfried had in fact turned up such evidence he would have investigated using a defense of Dawn and or someone hired by Dawn to commit the murders but never investigated such angle because he never was given any such accounts. His notes and the entire file was handed over to Weber. Weber never saw these supposed documents because they were not in the file. They were fabricated well after the conviction and falsely claimed to be part of the file. Weber was searching for evidence of the involvement of others and possibility of Dawn committing the murders. If this statement and the others had been in the legal file he would have interviewed all such persons himself and even likely called them at trial and pursued a different defense.
More evidence how this was all created after the fact and the analysis is about law in effect later and complete and utter BS is as follows:
"The court rejected Siegfried’s supplemental disclosure request, but allowed his original motions. And on March 11, 1975, Judge John J. J. Jones rules on Siegfried’s January 15th motion. Judge Jones approved a preliminary hearing regarding the admissibility of Butch’s purported confession. Furthermore, the court found that the evidence was legally sufficient enough to support the grand jury’s indictment, but allowed Siegfried access to the minutes of the proceedings.
The court, however, denied Siegfried’s request for the police reports, stating, “The reports of the police department requested, to the extent they constitute documents made in connection with the investigation of the defendant, are exempt from discovery under 240.10 (3) CPL. Defendant has made no showing that any of the police reports include routing factual information filed in the normal course of police activity, which is material to the preparation for his defense.”
240.10 (3) CPL, translated into layman’s terms, meant section 240.10, paragraph 3, of New York’s Criminal Procedure Law. However, the only item exempt under that section of the law is an “attorney’s work product” and not police reports. Judge Jone’s ruling was a small victory for the prosecution.
“At this point, Siegfried was feeling very aggravated,” Geraldine remembered. “So he wanted to petition the Chief Justice in Washington, D.C., for a change of venue. Butch wouldn’t allow him to because another inmate had told him how he tried a similar motion. The inmate told Butch that when his request was denied that the Suffolk County justice system got its revenge for seeking help outside the county.”
------
Ok first of all at that time 240.10(3)(a) excluded “reports, memoranda or other internal documents or work papers made by district attorneys, police officers or agents, in connection with the investigation [and ] prosecution…of a criminal action” from disclosure.
Moroever, 240.10(3)(b) protected “statements of witnesses and prospective witnesses of both parties” from disclosure. 240.20 gave the court discretion to order disclosure of reports of physical and mental examinations and scientific tests conducted in connection with a case thus forensic examinations and mental examinations were subject to disclosure if a judge decided to allow it.
Second, the suggestion he considered going to the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court to get a change of venue is the ultimate joke. This was a state court proceeding the proper way to get a change of venue is to apply for a change under NY Court rules there was no way to petition the US Supreme Court and when you do have grounds to apply to the US Supreme Court for something in an emergency situation you get whichever justice is on call at that moment, it rotates. The Chief Justice doesn’t decide things on his own. That someone would print such trash illustrates not having any legal understanding at all, no common sense at all and definitely that they did not do any research and just accepted the biggest load of crap ever. The source of course for all this crap is Geraldine. She provided the false documents and also is the one who claims Siegfried told her about wanting to go the the Supreme Court. Her claim she met with him is as false as the claim she met with Weber to discuss Ron's defense- reclal Weber denied such ever happened. As fake as her claims she visited him in prison- records show she never visited, never exchanged mail and never exchanged phone calls until 1985.
