Gionis Tries for Bail as Wayne Voices Her Fears

Dr. Thomas A. Gionis told U.S. authorities last month that he needed quick action on a passport application for his daughter because he planned to leave the country in 4 days, according to testimony Thursday at a 4-hour hearing on his request for bond release.

Lawyers for Gionis--who is being held without bond in the Oct. 3 attack on his ex-wife, Aissa Wayne, and financier Roger W. Luby--maintained that he was only planning to go on vacation, not flee the country.

Prosecutors argued that Gionis posed both a flight risk and a danger to Aissa Wayne if freed before trial. Harbor Municipal Judge Russell A. Bostrom took the case under submission, promising a decision today.

Gionis, 35, a wealthy orthopedic surgeon, has remained in Newport Beach City Jail since he was arrested at his Pomona home Tuesday night and charged with masterminding the attack by two pistol-carrying thugs at Luby’s Newport Beach estate last year. Authorities allege that Gionis was attempting to intimidate Wayne, with whom he was embroiled in a bitter dispute over custody of their 2-year-old daughter, Anastasia. Gionis has pleaded not guilty to a single conspiracy charge.

Newport Beach police asked that Gionis be denied bail in part because he had obtained passports for himself and Anastasia within the last few weeks and had made a flurry of calls to Greece, where he has friends and family.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans also argued that Gionis had beaten and threatened to kill his former wife and was capable of having those threats carried out. Aissa Wayne, daughter of the late actor John Wayne, testified Thursday that she would be afraid for her life should Gionis be freed.

“Are you afraid he will try to kill you now?” Evans asked.

“He might. Yes, I am afraid,” Wayne responded in a courtroom packed with news media and onlookers. Wayne’s mother, Pilar, attended the hearing, as did Luby and Gionis family members.

“He’s going to leave town if you let him out and he’s a danger to these people (Wayne and Luby),” Evans told the judge.

But under questioning by Byron K. McMillan, Gionis’ lawyer, Wayne acknowledged that she had called her ex-husband 2 weeks ago to ask for $10,000. Wayne also testified that she received the money the next day.

Wayne testified that she must maintain contact with Gionis because of her visitation rights to Anastasia and because a divorce court has not yet divided all their marital property.

McMillan scoffed at the claim that Gionis represented a bail risk, citing evidence at the hearing that Gionis is in the process of building up his five-clinic medical practice and has all his extra money tied up to pay more than $100,000 for lawyers in his divorce-child custody case.

“The man is not a danger, and he’s got no place to go,” McMillan said.

Rather than expand his practice, which is valued at between $500,000 and $2.5 million, Evans suggested that Gionis tried to sell it after the Wayne attack last fall. No buyers could be found, according to testimony at the hearing. The prosecutor also claimed that rent payments for several of Gionis’ five clinics have fallen in arrears.

Daughter’s Passport

To show Gionis’ alleged readiness to flee, Evans submitted a copy of Anastasia’s passport, dated March 7. On the passport application, Evans said, Gionis wrote that he and his daughter were leaving for Europe on March 11.

Gionis also arranged to have his daughter’s passport rushed to him via overnight Federal Express, Evans said. Most people simply wait for their passports to be delivered via the mails, a U.S. State Department agent testified. Gionis had obtained his own passport in January, investigators have said.

Evans suggested that the daughter’s passport application came as police closed in on a private investigator whom Gionis had hired to follow Aissa Wayne last year as part of the child-custody case. The investigator, O. Daniel Gal, was alleged in an arrest warrant issued a short time later to have hired the two thugs who assaulted Wayne and Luby. Gal is now in Europe, where he is being sought by authorities. The two men who allegedly carried out the attack are now in custody in lieu of $1-million bond each.

Gionis knew the investigation was nearing completion, Evans maintained, and he was preparing to flee with his daughter.

‘Man With a Mission’

“This is a man with a mission; he is going somewhere,” Evans alleged.

According to McMillan, Gionis was only preparing for a 2-week vacation to Europe this summer. Asked outside court why Gionis wrote that he intended to leave March 11, McMillan shrugged and said: “It (the application) says to put a date in it.”

In court, McMillan attempted to counter Evans’ claim that telephone records obtained by police showing a series of calls to Greece also indicated Gionis’ flight plans.

Gionis’ sister, Xanthi Gionis, testified that she made all the calls. She testified that she lived both in Palm Springs and at her brother’s residence. She said that she was in the habit of telephoning friends and family in Greece on a weekly basis.

Under questioning by Evans, Xanthi Gionis acknowledged that she is trying to help her brother. Evans also said later that an analysis of the telephone calls from Gionis’ home showed calls to Greece were placed only in recent weeks, not over an extended period.

While his own lawyer claimed that Gionis had not initiated contact with Gal recently, Evans submitted records suggesting that they had exchanged messages through an intermediary as recently as February.

How to Handle Police

The prosecutor introduced a series of FAX messages between Gal in Europe and his sister, Emmy, in Los Angeles, which Evans said included a discussion of how to handle Newport Beach police investigators.

In a Feb. 9 message, Evans said, Gal’s sister wrote that she had “talked to Tom Gionis finally” and that Gionis had “chuckled” at being told about the police investigation. Gionis then told her, she said in the message, to have Gal contact him at his Upland office.

In another message introduced, Gal advised his sister: “If (Newport Beach Police Sgt. Mike) Jackson talks to you, you don’t know where I am or when I’ll be back. I’m just on a case out of town, like San Francisco.” He then directed her to put all his files pertaining to the Gionis investigation into storage.

But police with a search warrant seized the files before they could be stowed away.