Father’s Grief Hangs in the Courtroom

For the last five weeks, a gray-haired grandfather has made the long drive from his home in San Pedro to the Superior Court in downtown Los Angeles.

Before he retired from a career as an insurance broker three years ago, John Rastello hated the commute up the Harbor Freeway. He finds it even more difficult today.

Inside a cramped courtroom on the sixth floor, the 67-year-old Rastello sits on a hard wooden bench, enduring hours of often tedious testimony into the circumstances surrounding the death of his youngest son. Stale air hangs in the room, impervious to a fan that whirs steadily on a far wall.

When a witness gets particularly graphic, Rastello’s son, Timothy, and daughter, Gayle, are close by to drape their arms around their father in a show of support.

Across the aisle from Rastello are eight men. One is Rollo Green, the Torrance police sergeant whom Rastello blames for the traffic accident that killed Kelly Rastello, 19, on Aug. 30, 1984. The seven others are Green’s fellow officers, who Rastello claims covered up the facts of the fatal traffic collision as part of a pattern of concealing police misconduct. All eight are defendants, along with Police Chief Donald Nash, in a lawsuit that Rastello and his wife filed 12 days after their son’s death.

They have denied a cover-up, saying Kelly Rastello caused his own death by speeding along Rolling Hills Road on his motorcycle.

But the trial has examined more than the accident and the disciplinary practices of the Torrance Police Department, focusing also on Rastello’s self-described obsession with his son’s death.

Behavioral Changes

His lawyers claim that the once-strong Irish Catholic family man has become anxious, irritable and absent-minded since his son’s death. Defense lawyers counter that the city should not be held responsible. They say that Rastello’s problems are the result of natural grieving for his son, complicated by his forced retirement in 1986 and the death of his wife, Geraldine, last December.

Last week, both sides heard Rastello’s eldest son, John III, describe the John Rastello the world knew before his son died.

“He was an Irishman,” John III said. “A friendly, outgoing man.”

The younger Rastello, 37, said his father--who claims three Irish grandparents along with the Italian grandfather who gave him his last name--had been a hard worker, attentive family man and community activist.

He told the jury that his father was a music lover who used to virtually skip around the family’s three-story home, snapping his fingers and singing along, when a favorite song came on the radio.

After Kelly’s death, John III said, his father was more likely to spend his time in meandering discussions about the police investigation of his son’s death. And he seemed to lose interest in his 13 grandchildren and in his own children’s careers, the son testified.

Drastic Difference

Gayle Rivers, at 39 Rastello’s second-oldest daughter, told the jury near the start of the trial that the transformation has been drastic.

“He cried a lot,” Rivers said. “My father has been crying for five years.”

The loss of Kelly was particularly painful because of his place in the family.

Kelly was five years younger than the nearest of his seven siblings, an unplanned “gift” in the Rastellos’ lives, his father told the jury. Kelly had been the only child left at home. He played football and ran cross-country in high school. He worked in construction and planned to go to college.

His father said that he loved to take Kelly to football games and that Geraldine Rastello worked with her son in the garden. In 1983, Kelly received a plaque from Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates for rescuing an elderly neighborhood man who was being choked by an attacker outside the Rastello home. A beaming John Rastello and his wife joined Kelly and the chief for the presentation.

Charismatic Son

Kelly had charisma, his relatives say. “He had the kind of personality,” his father told the jury, “that you would put him in a room with 10 other men for an hour and he would know them all well, where another man might know just one.”

Rastello told the jury that he has been possessed by grief and anger since the death of his boy.

He said that his suspicions began when he learned officers had reported that the driver of the pickup truck that hit Kelly had made an illegal left-hand turn but had not been cited. As a veteran insurance man, Rastello testified, he had never seen a driver who didn’t get a ticket under those circumstances.

He told the jury that his faith in the official version of the accident decreased when he learned that the driver of the pickup was not given a blood-alcohol test, even though he admitted to having been drinking.

Accident Report Delayed

Rastello said his suspicions turned into conviction when Torrance police promised several times that an accident report would be completed, and then it wasn’t.

By then, Rastello had learned that the driver of the pickup truck was an off-duty police officer.

“I felt there was a cover-up,” Rastello testified. “It angered me. I had a firm belief in the system and that what police officers said was true. And I found out that wasn’t so.”

Rastello said he was so devastated by the accident that, for a time, he hyperventilated at the mere sight of a motorcycle or a police car.

He said he sued “to get to the truth and to clear my son Kelly. . .”

Conflicting Opinions

A psychologist called earlier by the plaintiff testified that many of Rastello’s problems are rooted in his perception that there has been a cover-up.

But a psychiatrist called by the defense Tuesday told the jury that Rastello’s strongest emotions are linked to the death of his son and his wife, and the loss of his job.

Dr. Saul Faerstein said feelings about an alleged cover-up seem less Rastello’s concern than “an obsession . . . of the attorneys in the case.”

The issue is significant because Rastello is seeking damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress from all eight officers, Nash and the city of Torrance. Only Green can be held liable, if the psychological upset is tied to the accident. But all the defendants could be ordered to pay damages if the jury decides that Rastello’s emotional problems were caused by a cover-up.

Suffered Stroke

Rastello admits that he has been affected by all his losses. Last December, his wife, Geraldine, died of lung cancer that had been diagnosed a year before as the couple prepared to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. In April, Rastello suffered a stroke that put him in the hospital for a week and left his left hand partially paralyzed.

Rastello said it was only after his forced retirement that he realized that the accident had made him inattentive to his work--selling insurance to fishermen and other marine operators. His former boss testified last week that he had advised Rastello in 1986 that the pressure of insurance work was too much for him and that he should retire.

Rastello took the advice, but he said that only gave him more time to think about the loss of Kelly.

The memories make it too painful to even think about losing his case, Rastello said during a break in the trial.

“I don’t want to project,” Rastello said. “I really just don’t want to think about that.”