The Tiger

Every morning, before Richard Sprague climbs into his black Chrysler, a bodyguard checks the car for a bomb. This is because Sprague, as first assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, has sought a first-degree murder conviction in 66 cases and got what he wanted in 65. Two convictions were against killers of United Mine Workers Official Joseph Yablonski, and word came from the minefields that there was a contract out on Sprague's life. Sprague doesn't take the threat seriously. The people who work for him do.

Now 46, Sprague is one of the most effective prosecutors in the nation. A short, intense man with sad, hound-dog eyes, he acts as the executive officer directly under the elected district attorney, Arlen Specter. Specter sets the guidelines and runs the politics. Sprague gets the convictions--from murder to petty bribery. "He is seething with righteous indignation," says one judge who has handled Sprague's cases. "Some men are like a tiger. Dick Sprague is like a whole cage full of tigers--leashed and caged, thank God. But you can feel the power that's there."

One of Sprague's most celebrated cases occurred in 1961, when he decided to prosecute a man for the first-degree murder of his wife even though no body, no blood, no physical evidence of violence was ever found. Sprague argued that no woman would willingly disappear without taking her bridgework, her clothes and cosmetics.

"The defense was good," another lawyer recalls, "and of course their case was that she simply had a fight and walked out. Just before the trial ended, a strange woman suddenly walked into the courtroom. The jury looked at the woman, and the defense lawyer said: 'You see? It is going through your minds. That woman could be the missing wife.' " Then, Sprague himself recalls, "I said: 'Yes, you looked at that woman. But I was looking at the defendant and he didn't look. Because he knows there is no woman alive to walk through that door.' " The jury brought in a verdict of death.

The key to Sprague's success, says one judge, "is the logic of the case as he puts it together. It just grinds ahead like a river of lava, crushing everything in its path." That logic derives from meticulous preparation. When the Yablonskis were murdered in their beds in Clarksville, Pa., the local prosecutor knew the case was too big to handle, so Sprague was asked to take charge. By that time, the FBI had captured one gunman, Claude Vealey. He led the FBI to four others: Aubran Martin, a baby-faced hoodlum; Paul Gilly, a burglar; his wife Annette, and Silous Huddleston, Annette's father. Vealey had confessed, but his story was not enough to take all of the culprits to trial.

"The game plan was to divide the group up, and pick on the weakest figures first," says Sprague. "I would not let the twigs band together. They were placed in separate jails to think about what would happen to them." Sprague took on young Martin first. "I chose the jury carefully," Sprague recalls. "I didn't want any sweet, forgiving grandmother types. Nor did I want any ladies who would find the guy good-looking. I summed up by painting the heinous nature of this crime. The dark night. The cold snow on the ground. The car full of killers on the hilltop. I told that jury that if they did not convict Martin, they were inviting people to come to their own homes at night and kill them in cold blood."

Martin got the death penalty. So did Gilly. Then Mrs. Gilly cracked.

Sprague recalls: "She said she would trade her life for a guilty plea. But in her own mind she had determined she would trade us as little as possible. Her initial confession didn't lead anywhere." Sprague booked her into a hotel and began a series of lie-detector sessions that lasted eight days. "The thing that was difficult," says Sprague, "was that she wasn't lying. She was just withholding information. That is an extremely hard thing to get from the polygraph."

"She was made of iron," the polygraph operator recalls. "It was a test of mental determination--us against her. And she was built like Daisy Mae. Strong. Part way through the test, she told us she had willed that she would forget all the details of the case." At this point Sprague told her: "The deal's off. You aren't leveling. We're going to send you to the chair." On the eighth day, she broke, crying, her body suddenly racked with sobs, sweating profusely. "And she made a good confession," Sprague says. After that, it was easy to get Huddleston to confess that he was the conduit for a payoff from union officials. Sprague is still sniffing along the trail that he is sure leads upward into the U.M.W. hierarchy.

Unreal. Sprague learned some of his tireless approach from his parents, both psychiatrists, who taught him to probe and analyze. Then, during World War II, he learned an unforgettable lesson when Navy shipmates tried to rescue some drifting Japanese sailors and were riddled by Japanese gunfire. "You've got to have a society," Sprague says now, "in which people who transgress will be caught and punished." Even after the Supreme Court's ban on the death penalty, he continues to support it, and last week the Philadelphia D.A.'s office proposed amendments to state law that they hope will permit executions for certain crimes.

Sprague almost left the law before really getting started: "I went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, but I hated it. It was unreal. Then I got a job as a public defender. That took me into court, and I loved it. The courtroom was something magic. It was like a play, unfolding, developing."

In 2 1/2 years, Sprague says, he defended more than a thousand suspects --so successfully that in 1958 he was hired by the D.A.'s office, for which he has prosecuted 10,000 cases. Eventually he wants to become D.A. himself--and to make sure that no malefactor escapes his claws. "That one first-degree conviction I missed," he says ruefully, "came back second-degree."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.