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Lakers star Kobe Bryant embraces trainer Gary Vitti. Photo by Ray Vidal |
by Paul Teetor
Gary Vitti looked up as Kobe Bryant, stylin’ in a sleek vanilla-gray sweat suit and black Gilligan-style hat pulled down almost far enough to hide the big grin sneaking up on his face, limped through the door of the Los Angeles Lakers training room Friday morning.
Though temporarily out of action with a sprained ankle, Bryant’s trash-talking skills were in all-star shape.
"Hey OJ, congratulations," he said with a rubber-faced smirk, chuckling at his own clever putdown.
Vitti flashed him a thin half-smile beneath his bushy mustache.
"Thanks a lot," he said. "Now I’m OJ?"
The two men embraced, and Bryant’s verbal slam dunk was forgiven as typically rough locker room humor between two long-time friends.
But the remark wasn’t forgotten.
It was a not-so-gentle reminder that Vitti’s long personal nightmare was not over, a realization that was just beginning to sink in along with his relief at being acquitted on a domestic abuse charge less than 48 hours earlier.
When Vitti was declared not guilty by a 12-0 vote of the jury late Wednesday afternoon in Torrance Superior Court, the Lakers trainer — who had maintained a stoic front while his personal life was laid bare over a week-long trial — broke down and hugged his bulldog-of-a-lawyer, Carl "Tony" Capozzola.
After huddling with friends and family, he told the press pack outside the courtroom how happy he was to be vindicated and to have the 10-month ordeal finally over.
But by Friday morning, even before Bryant drove the point home, Vitti realized an acquittal is one thing, vindication quite another. For celebrity defendants in the Media Age, the vindication part takes a little longer.
First he would almost certainly have to endure similar comments — or worse -- from hostile hecklers around the NBA and possibly even from neighbors in his adopted hometown of Manhattan Beach.
"I wonder what people in the Beach Cities really think of me? Do they even know I was acquitted? Will there still be a stigma?" Vitti said. " All the local press did was play up her side of the story and make me look like a monster. Where do I go to get my reputation back?"
Media madness
While the Vitti trial merited only a few paragraphs in the agenda-setting Los Angeles Times, it was front page, above-the-fold news day after day in the local Daily Breeze, which broke the Vitti story several months ago and was the only news organization to follow the trial on a daily basis.
The Breeze coverage of the first day of the trial was highlighted by a huge page 1 photo of a weeping Wendy Newton, his ex-fiancé, with her hand over her face wiping away tears as she testified about their fight last May 29. The pull quote highlighted directly above her set a politically correct tone: "I felt intimidated. I expected them to make him leave." Underneath her picture was a postage stamp-sized snapshot of Vitti, tightly cropped to cut off his hair and chin, shot from below so that his deep-set eyes, large nose and grim expression dominated the frame.
The headline hyped the terror angle, casting it as a scary movie: "Trial brings out tears, fears." You could almost hear John Walsh warning about America’s Most Wanted and Sally Jessy Raphael lecturing about good men doing bad things.
Vitti’s attorney, Capozzola, complained bitterly about the Breeze coverage throughout the trial. At one point he attempted to ask Newton about her contacts with the Breeze, implying that she was driving the paper’s coverage. Judge Jesse Rodriguez disallowed that line of questioning. The jury, which was not sequestered, was instructed not to read about or discuss the trial.
Daily Breeze editor Jim Box did not return several phone calls seeking comment for this story.
Beach City hoop insiders never fail to mention that Vitti, Shaquille O’Neal and Michael Olowkandi of the Clippers live in Manhattan Beach, while Lamar Odom and Darius Miles, both young stars-to-be for the Clippers, live in Marina Del Rey.
In the Lakers 1980s glory days, Vitti usually rode shotgun next to Coach Pat Riley. Today Vitti sits one seat over from Coach Phil Jackson, with assistant coach Tex Winter between them.
Now Vitti fears that many people will look at the familiar image -- the short, fit guy with balding curly hair and thick mustache -- and see him differently.
Still lingering, he fears, from the basketball courts at Live Oak Park in Manhattan to the courts at King Harbor’s SportCenter in Redondo, is the media-induced impression of a girlfriend-beating, cop bribing, fast-lane kind of guy who hung with Magic Johnson back in the day and is still living the wild bachelor life at the ripe old age of 47.
"My real neighbors, the ones who know me, know I’m nothing like that," Vitti said during a two-hour interview Friday morning at the Lakers HealthSouth Training Center in El Segundo. "Now I hope the rest of my neighbors — the ones in Hermosa, Redondo and especially in Manhattan Beach — will listen to my side of the story before they make up their minds about what really happened last May 29."
That’s why he chose to speak out, after 12 of his peers found him not guilty on the technical charge of "corporal injury on a cohabitant." In other words, not guilty of domestic abuse -- a crime that has become second only to child molestation in terms of a public stigma.
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Trainer Gary Vitti massages LA Laker Robert Horry’s sore neck Friday morning at the team’s El Segundo training center. Horry, recovering from a strained neck, was able to play that night. Photo by Ray Vidal. |
Witness for the prosecution
Even though it was only a misdemeanor charge, Vitti, who said he is a deeply religious man raised in a strict Catholic home with two sisters and 11 aunts, knew he was facing a life-changing moment when the verdict was read. Those last seconds, when he was ordered to stand and face the jury, were spent in a cocoon of spiritual serenity, he said. In his inside coat pocket he had a St. Christopher medal, a picture of his two daughters, and the text of three religious passages he was given for the trial.
As he felt the paper and the metal underneath his blue double-breasted suit buttoned all the way up, he said, he felt that no matter what the verdict was he had done the right thing in fighting the charge and not accepting a plea bargain.
"I told Tony before we went in, I accept the verdict, whatever it is. I told him I wouldn’t have done anything differently," he said.
A man who has spent his whole life as a healer, as a giver, he said he had tried to help Newton, emotionally, financially and professionally, and had come within two months of marrying her. He accepted the end of their engagement, but said he could not live with accepting a criminal conviction for something he knew he didn’t do, even though some had urged him to do just that and get it over with before it became public.
Vitti’s trial lasted a week and featured a dramatic, recall-the-witness-twice cross-examination of the 35-year-old Newton by Capozzola. A tough, silver-haired ex-prosecutor with a sandpaper voice and a street fighter’s style, Capozzola challenged virtually every part of her direct testimony. He introduced evidence that he said proved she lied to the police about her age, lied to a bank on a loan application, and lied about whether or not she had written most of an affidavit that she asked a friend to submit as evidence in the case. And, he insisted, she was lying about Vitti choking her into unconsciousness.
This case was about self-defense, he argued to the jury, and was only prosecuted because of Newton’s charge that Vitti initially received preferential treatment because he had given several police officers Lakers’ tickets.
Newton responded to Capozzola’s pointed questions with a frustrating mix of stalling, evasion, weeping, and trying to give her point of view instead of answering the question. Dozens of times, she was asked by an exasperated Capozzola: "Miss Newton, did you understand the question I just asked you?" Frequently Judge Jesse Rodriquez admonished her to "just answer the question you’ve been asked. You’ll be able to elaborate later when the deputy district attorney examines you."
A typical exchange occurred during Capozzola’s cross-examination at 3:30 p.m. Monday afternoon:
Capozzola: "Now, Miss Newton, referring back to the events of last May 29,"
Newton: "You mean when he strangled me?"
Capozzola: "Miss Newton, did I use the word strangled? Your honor, please instruct her to just wait for a question and then answer the questions."
Vitti did not take the witness stand, but Newton was recalled twice for lengthy cross examinations. The trial appeared to turn on the issue of her credibility.
In his closing argument, Capozzola repeatedly called Newton a liar. He portrayed her as a vengeful ex-girlfriend trying to manipulate the legal system to take advantage of an emerging and overdue concern for the rights of battered women. Her motives: to get more than her fair share of the proceeds from the sale of their 13th Street house, and to ruin the reputation of an ex-lover, a caring, compassionate man who happened to be a celebrity of sorts, at least among Laker fans.
Deputy District Attorney Benny Osorio, a rising young star in the district attorney’s office, was calm and collected in the face of Capozzola’s relentless attack, even chuckling occasionally at some of his more outrageous antics. He countered the full-court press by asking the jury to focus exclusively on the events of May 29 and to ignore the other issues raised by the defense. Even then he was forced to deal with a complaining witness who by her own account had initiated whatever physical contact there was by slapping a glass bowl out of Vitti’s hand, a witness who admitted she had suffered no injury that lasted beyond 10 minutes.
In the end, the 12-member jury decided that, whatever happened in the brief scuffle, it did not warrant a criminal conviction.
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Gary Vitti in the hallway outside the trainers room at the Lakers El Segundo facility. Vitti, a Manhattan Beach resident for the last 17 years, hopes to stay in the Beach Cities. Photo by Ray Vidal. |
Speaking Out
Friday morning, Vitti talked like a man let out of an emotional prison, breaking a chain of silence imposed first by the pre-trial maneuvering and then by his attorney’s surprise decision to overrule him and insist he did not need to take the witness stand.
"I really wanted to take the stand. I had prayed about it, and I was ready. But Tony said the evidence spoke for itself, it was clear to the jury what had happened and I didn’t need to. So I didn’t," he said.
Vitti spoke softly but emotionally, never raising his voice but still letting out much of the frustration of a man unjustly accused, saying many of the things he had planned to say on the witness stand.
One thing the trial did was to show how reconstructed events — especially events told in the shorthand of news and described primarily by one source, as much of the Breeze pre-trial coverage was with Newton — are not always exactly as they are reported.
Breeze stories highlighted Newton’s claim that Vitti had choked her with two hands until she passed out, but did not highlight testimony that Newton had on two previous occasions physically attacked him, and admitted she routinely kept a hammer under her bed.
Newton testified that the fight was the result of tension over a dinner with Vitti’s ex-wife and two daughters, who lived nearby. She said the physical part began when she knocked a glass bowl full of car keys out of Vitti’s hands and it shattered on the wood floor. Vitti, aware of two recent episodes of violence by Newton and fearing that she was out-of-control again, says he merely pressed her against the wall with one hand for two or three seconds to restrain her and calm her down.
Newton said he used both hands, that it was more like five or ten seconds, and that she passed out.
"Anybody that knows Gary knows he is a gentle man. He certainly never lifted a hand towards me in the 17 years we were together," said his former wife Chris, who took the stand as a character witness. She and their two daughters either see Vitti every day or speak to him on the phone when the Lakers are out of town, she said.
And it was only under the microscope of the trial that the general public learned that Vitti’s belated arrest came after Newton, at first weeping and then threatening to go public with her charges that Vitti used Lakers tickets to bribe cops, had convinced detectives to go above the heads of the investigating officers, who declined to make an arrest, and take the case to the district attorney.
The Breeze’s politically correct slant continued right to the end with a quote from an anonymous juror saying: "None of us feel good about this verdict. It doesn’t make anyone feel good." A domestic abuse counselor was quoted by name saying "What does it take, a dead body?"
"I couldn’t believe that a newspaper would allow someone, an alleged juror, to say something critical like that anonymously," Vitti said. "That verdict was 12-0. I wonder if the reporter actually talked to anyone on the jury. Who knows if he did when you quote critical stuff like that without putting a name to it?"
Meet you at Michi’s
Vitti’s parents were Italian immigrants who settled in Stamford, Connecticut on a dirt road beside a dairy farm. His father worked 45 years in a handbag factory, his mother worked part-time as a secretary, and he was raised in a strict Italian Catholic family with two sisters and 11 aunts.
"You know the wedding scene in the Godfather? Take away the crime part, and that’s my family," he said
"I was brought up to respect women. I would never hit or attack a woman. It’s not in my makeup. I’m a healer, not a hitter."
He attended eight years of parochial school and four years at a Catholic High School. He then spent two years at a Catholic college, the University of Dayton, before transferring to Southern Connecticut University for his last two years.
After stints as the trainer for the University of Portland and assistant trainer for the Portland Trailblazers he joined the Lakers in 1984 and immediately moved to Manhattan Beach.
"Los Angeles is not necessarily a place I would choose to live. But living in Manhattan makes it tolerable," Vitti said. "It still has a small-town feel. When I get home I can’t wait to get out on The Strand or in the ocean. I can feel all the stress fade away."
His relationship with Newton began as a typical Manhattan Beach romance: two successful professionals back on the singles scene meet casually at an upscale restaurant, start casually dating, and before you can say "domestic partner" are dating exclusively and then living together.
Newton declined to comment Tuesday on Vitti’s version of their time together, other than to say: "If he wanted to talk about it, he should have taken the witness stand." But her testimony traced much of their relationship, and it agrees with the basics of Vitti’s version.
Vitti and Newton first laid eyes on each other in the summer of 1997 at Michi’s, one of the best of the upscale good-food-good-looking-crowd type of spots that have come to dominate downtown Manhattan night life. It’s expensive in a if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it kind of way. Located on Manhattan Avenue, one block above the Strand, it is a favorite meeting place for affluent singles, the men-and-women-in-blackHollywood crowd and anyone else with plenty of money and enough style to pass muster with its casual-chic dress code.
"I was there one night with friends, she was there with friends, there was some conversation among her friends and my friends, and we talked," Vitti recalled.
He didn’t see her again for a long time. Almost a year later, an old friend was in town for a Lakers game. Vitti took him to Michi’s after the game. That was when the romance with Newton officially began.
"She walks in with a friend and walks right up to me and says ‘I know you,’" Vitti said. "I said really? And she recounted the entire evening of a year ago. She knew exactly who I was."
He got her number that night and called her a few days later to ask her out.
"A relationship started, and at first it was good," Vitti said. "But then she started telling me about her childhood. I won’t get too specific, but think of the absolute worst things you can think of to happen to a child, and that’s what she had to endure. I truly believe this case is not really about me. It’s about her childhood."
Vitti referred to one of the pieces of evidence introduced by the prosecution, the so-called apology letter in which a guilt-ridden Vitti says he can’t believe he raised his hand to a woman for the first time in his life.
"The prosecution focused on the part where I said I feel like an animal because I never put my hands on a woman before," Vitti said. "But equally important is the part where I write, ‘I tried to give you the love you deserved, but all I gave you was the anger you’ve been trying to get away from all your life."
They dated for a year, until Vitti made his first attempt to break up.
"She did some things that I thought were pretty cruel, and I said I can’t do this anymore. I have to break up," Vitti said. "The next day she called me and said she had to talk to me. She was crying and said if I never wanted to see her again after talking to her, then she would understand but please at least come see her once."
So Vitti, against his better judgement, went to see her. The healing instinct dies hard, he said.
"She was a basket case, and she spilled out her whole life story. At that point I couldn’t leave her, I couldn’t walk away. I was still trying to rescue her," he said.
Things got worse on Feb. 2, 2000 when Vitti says Newton struck him several times.
"She beat the hell out of me that night, over some jealousy thing that made no sense," he said.
April 23, Easter Sunday, was another key date in the relationship’s downward spiral.
"My 12-year old girl called to ask about dinner, and Wendy answered. My daughter said something like ‘Hey, is my dad there?’" Vitti said. "Her reaction to that was: ‘Your children disgust me.’ I would rather she had taken a knife and stabbed me in the heart than say something like that about my children. I tried to explain to her that sometimes children aren’t as polite as they should be, but she kept on with it."
Fast forward to May 29: there had been tension over his planned dinner with his ex-wife and two girls. Vitti’s 9-year-old daughter has asked him to cook his traditional Italian dishes for a family dinner, something he loved doing for them. Newton didn’t want them in the house and pushed for a restaurant meal.
Finally, in the pathetic way that so many domestic arguments disintegrate, Vitti told her to move her car in the driveway or he would move it for her. They both raced for the car keys in the glass bowl.
By both accounts, Vitti got there first. She then knocked the bowl out of his hands, causing it to shatter on the floor.
That’s where their stories diverge. Vitti insisted he was restraining her in self-defense. Newton testified he went into a rage and strangled her.
When she awoke, she said, she knew she had to call the police. When they came, she admitted starting the fight and the police report said there were no injuries. There was no arrest, and the investigating officers left.
The next day, Vitti said, Newton went to the Manhattan Beach Police Department and demanded that he be arrested for attempted murder. At first, her emotional appeals failed, he said. Then she threatened to reveal that Vitti had used Lakers’ tickets over the years to get out of speeding tickets and to avoid arrest the night before.
Vitti dismissed that charge, saying he had given police and firemen maybe a half-dozen tickets over 17 years.
"That had nothing to do with bribery," he said. "I was brought up to respect public safety officers and once in a while gave them tickets around the holidays. The most recent time was when Phil Jackson had a stalker who lived in Manhattan Beach. We thanked one of the detectives who worked on the case with some tickets that were way up high in the Forum."
Police Chief Ernie Klevesahl said an internal probe is continuing into Vitti’s arrest as well as Newton’s charges of preferential treatment and bribery. He declined to comment for this story.
Six days later, Vitti received a call from the police. There was a warrant out for his arrest on a misdemeanor charge. He was asked to come to the police department.
The Price paid
In his 29 years on both sides of the legal system, prosecuting and defending scores of high-stakes criminal cases, Capozzola said he has never seen a client pray every day for the other side, as Vitti did for Newton during this trial.
"I told him not to do it," Capozzola said, "but on this issue he wouldn’t listen to his attorney."
Vitti said he has learned some painful lessons about human nature and his tendency to rescue people.
"Each time I would try to leave, Wendy would find a way to get back in my heart," he said. "I used to believe that troubled people can be saved, but I don’t have that faith anymore."
He shook his head sadly.
"I have compassion for those people, but they suck you dry and then go on to the next person. I’m not going to be that next person anymore."
For almost 20 years, Vitti has been like Woody Allen’s mythic Zelig character, the vaguely familiar twilight figure living anonymously in fame’s large shadow. He has been near the epicenter of LA celebrity, a bit player in the Jack-and-Dyan-I-Love-LA national hype, starting with the days of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar right through the modern era of Shaq and Kobe. One of the hardest days of his life, he said, was telling the team about Magic’s AIDS infection in 1991.
But until he experienced the full force of being a celebrity defendant himself, of being fair game for the press, police and public, he said, he didn’t have a true understanding of celebrity’s dynamics, of the irony so often found in celebrity’s unexpected consequences.
"The very thing that Wendy Newton said got me preferential treatment — my so-called celebrity status — is actually what ended up getting me arrested and made the prosecution push for a trial," he said. "I just hope and pray that it doesn’t prevent people from seeing that I was unjustly accused, that I’m just a normal guy who had to live through a nightmare and just wants to return to the life I had before all this started."
A life, he hopes, in Manhattan Beach. He is selling the house he shared with Newton and now must make some hard decisions about his future.
"I hope this doesn’t end up with me leaving Manhattan Beach and the South Bay. This is my home now, and it has been for 17 years," he said. "I want to stay here. I just hope people here want me to stay." ER