Secret Recording Jolts Prosecution in Trial of Dr. Gionis

The prosecution was jolted Tuesday by testimony in the trial of Dr. Thomas A. Gionis, accused of ordering the assault on his ex-wife Aissa Wayne, when the defense introduced a secretly recorded telephone conversation that challenged the credibility of a witness.

The recording was introduced in an attempt to show that the state’s second witness--a district attorney’s investigator--manufactured false evidence against Gionis, who is charged with ordering the 1988 assault on Wayne and her then-boyfriend.

At issue was whether Gionis, on the day of the attack, may have taken a phone call in his limousine from the private detective who set up the attack. The D.A.’s investigator testified Tuesday that Gionis’ chauffeur told him that Gionis was in the limo at the time of the call.

But it turned out that the chauffeur had secretly taped his interview with the investigator, and the tape recording introduced Tuesday shows no such statement by the chauffeur. The investigator, Robert Davis, was forced to admit that he had made a mistake in his own report on a critical piece of evidence.

Gionis, 37, is accused of ordering the Oct. 3, 1988, assault on Wayne, who is John Wayne’s daughter, and financier Roger W. Luby, in the garage of Luby’s Newport Beach estate. Wayne and Gionis were engaged in a bitter custody fight over their daughter, nearly 2 at the time.

Luby’s Achilles’ tendon was severed and Wayne’s face was smashed several times into the concrete floor. Wayne is scheduled to testify today.

The prosecution contends that the two henchman who carried out the assault were hired by Gionis’ private investigator, Dan Gal, on the doctor’s orders. Important to the prosecution’s case is a series of telephone calls made from Gal’s car phone to Gionis’ car and home just before the assault.

That’s because one of the assailants, Jeffrey K. Bouey, has testified at pretrial hearings that when Gal got off the phone, he said: “That was the client. He’s upset. He wants this done now.”

Two of those calls went to Gionis’ limo phone. A third went to his house in Pomona. According to Bouey, Gal did not say where he had reached the client.

Davis testified Tuesday that Gionis’ limo driver, Ray Ruiz, told him in a telephone interview that Gionis had indeed been in the limo at the time those calls were made from Gal’s car.

Ruiz, the first prosecution witness, denied telling that to the investigator. Also, in a separate, recorded face-to-face meeting with investigators, Ruiz denied that the doctor had been in the limo at the time.

But investigator Davis, on fierce cross-examination by Gionis’ attorney John D. Barnett, was insistent that Ruiz told him Gionis was in the car.

How many telephone conversations did Davis have with Ruiz? Barnett asked. Just one, Davis answered.

“You’re absolutely sure about that?” Barnett asked.

“Yes, positive,” Davis answered.

That’s when Barnett sprang his trap. He laid in front of Davis a transcript of the Davis-Ruiz conversation. The transcript shows that the investigator didn’t ask the driver if Gionis had been in the limo that morning.

Gionis turned to one of the defense staff sitting in the front row and winked while Davis sat in the witness seat shocked at what he was seeing.

For the next 30 minutes, Davis stumbled over his answers and squirmed in his seat. He admitted that the circumstances gave the “appearance” that he was lying to the jurors. But he still insisted that Ruiz had told him that Gionis was in the limo to receive the calls.

After jurors heard the recording in the afternoon, Davis admitted that his own written report on the conversation was inaccurate because it stated that Ruiz made the admission in the first telephone call from Ruiz to Davis.

“There must have been two telephone calls (from Ruiz),” Davis said. He continued that it must have been in a second telephone call that the limo driver gave him that critical information.

Yet Davis admitted that there was only one call mentioned in his report and that even as he sat in court he could only remember one telephone call.

“You knew this morning you were in big trouble, and when you came back this afternoon you were going to have to come up with something, otherwise, it would look like you guys perjured yourselves,” Barnett told him.

The defense attorney saved one of his fiercest salvos for last.

‘When you finally did meet with Mr. Ruiz, and he told you that Dr. Gionis had not been in the limo that morning, why didn’t you say: ‘Hey, that’s not what you told me on the telephone’?”

Davis answered that he didn’t know.

The prosecution’s case does not hinge solely on the two telephone calls to the limo. Immediately after those calls, there was a call from Gal to Gionis’ house. Prosecutors contend that call could have been the one in which Gionis gave the order to have Wayne and Luby assaulted.

Gionis, free from custody on $250,000 bail, faces seven felony counts of assault with a deadly weapon, false imprisonment, conspiracy and residential burglary.

Jerrel Hintergardt, one of the two assailants who admitted his role, is now serving an eight-year prison sentence in the incident. Gal and Bouey are awaiting trial.