friday night drinking at a bar called coconut joe s. tony was with three co-workers, mike keenan, 39, owner of a local business called sunshine landscaping, eddie espinoza, 26, the company s foreman, and another part time employee. 27-year-old joe d ambrosio. stoney lewis said before he left the bar he saw a series of heated arguments between toby and eddie espinoza with espinoza pushing tony around and threatening him. according to stoney, that was just the beginning. a couple witnesses were sleeping at 3:00 friday night, early saturday morning. and they were awakened by loud noises, yelling, and they saw joe, mike and eddie banging on doors, looking for paul lewis. and they had tony klann in the
longenecker. you don t really hear about male on male rape all that often. to me that suggests a whole other degree of violence. but then it went a step further because it was that the man who had been arrested and raped was stoney lewis. the same stoney lewis who had first tipped off police that joe, keenan and espinoza might be the ones responsible for tony s murder. my heart just dropped into the pit of my stomach. and i m thinking, oh, my god, the deceased in this case has witnessed a rape. and the rapist is the man who is pointing his finger at other men. but if neil was able to connection these two cases in an afternoon, why hadn t police and prosecutors done the same? the prosecutor of joe s case was carmen marino. it turned out that the prosecutor of the rape case was carmen marino. at the same time. so it doesn t take too much to
park. apparently they were convince that had stoney lewis had stolen drugs from them and they were forcing tony klann to lead them to stoney. tony had been crying. he looked like he had been beat a little bit. and they saw joe d ambrosio with a navy to his throat. this was at 3:00 in the morning. stoney lewis story was all detectives needed to hear. we went up into cleveland heights and took five cleveland heights policemen with us. and we went to the apartment. eddie espinoza answered the door and was placed under arrest. next police searched for joe. first thing in the morning, the cops break in. i m all the way in the back in the bathroom sitting on the toilet. all i see is the door fling open and i see two guys in plain
clothes with guns pointing at me. and i m like, what the heck is this? even without a warrant, police search joe s apartment. we did. we covered three large knives and several other smaller items, some clothing and we confiscated all kinds of stuff we found there. a black pickup truck later determined to belong to mike keenan was parked in the driveway and impounded by police. mike keenan was arrested the following day. from there, things moved fast. at the station, eddie espinoza immediately began talking. he told a story about mike keenan and joe d ambrosio forcing tony klann into the pickup truck. they went around for stoney lewis. he couldn t be found and evidently in frustration decided
them with aggravated murder. each would face the death penalty. joe s court appointed lawyer convinced him to waive his right to a jury trial. i haven t a clue of the law. so whatever they said, i did. the prosecution was handled by a tough veteran litigator named carmen marino. they investigate ad good case and brought in good witnesses. there was nothing in this case that i had to do that the police didn t already do. that s rare. at trial, the state s case hinged on eddie espinoza s eyewitness account of the murder and the testimony of stoney lewis. to defend himself, joe took stand. but his only alibi was that he was home alone sleeping. the prosecutor just tore me apart. you know. my attorneys did absolutely