Tragic Chapter Comes to End : Torrance: The city’s record settlement with John Rastello over his son’s death ends the father’s grueling transition from a staunch believer in the police to a plaintiff in a lawsuit.

Seven years after his son’s death, tears still come all too easily when John Rastello thinks of the youngest of his eight children.

On Thursday, the tears mingled with sighs of relief as Rastello and his attorneys announced a $6.5-million legal settlement with the city of Torrance, which had appealed a 1989 jury verdict. The agreement ends Rastello’s long odyssey to prove that the Torrance Police Department conspired to cover up the facts surrounding his son’s death in a motorcycle accident.

“I’m just grateful it’s over,” Rastello, 68, said at a press conference called by his attorneys. Catching his breath in a sob, he wiped apologetically at his eyes, murmuring, “I swore I wasn’t going to do this. . . . I’m sorry.”

Ever since 19-year-old Kelly C. Rastello was killed on Aug. 31, 1984, the family has battled to find out what really happened to him.

On the night of the accident, police told them Kelly was at fault because he was speeding and could not stop when a pickup truck, driven by off-duty Torrance Police Sgt. Rollo Green, turned left in front of him.

But the Rastellos delved into the accident themselves.

John Rastello and his wife, Geraldine, filed suit against the Torrance Police Department and officers at the scene, alleging that they conspired to conceal Green’s responsibility for the accident as part of a pattern of whitewashing police misconduct.

Six months before the case was set to go to trial, Geraldine Rastello died of cancer. John Rastello, who said he believes his wife’s grief contributed to her death, pushed ahead with the seven-week trial in the summer of 1989.

Witnesses revealed that Green, who admitted drinking before the crash, was not given a field sobriety test until nearly an hour after the crash and was never given a blood-alcohol test; that a field supervisor used one of the department’s few untapped phone lines to report in from the scene of the accident, and that Green was not arrested, but instead was driven home by police.

Jurors concluded that the cover-up followed a Police Department “custom and policy” of condoning misbehavior by officers. They awarded Rastello $5.5 million for his son’s death, and the judge in the case later ordered the city to pay $2.1 million more in attorney fees.

Experts in civil rights law said at the time that the verdict was well beyond judgments in similar cases, which usually average less than $100,000.

No money was paid pending an appeal of the case, but accrued interest has pushed the amount owed by the city to more than $9 million. The city’s insurer has paid $3.5 million, and the city will make up the difference from emergency reserves.

On Thursday, city and police officials insisted that their agreement to settle is not an admission of guilt.

“We feel disappointed that the appeal process can’t take place because we feel we would have been vindicated,” acting Police Chief Jim Popp said.

The $6.5-million settlement does not exonerate Green from responsibility for a separate $380,000 jury award against him. Rastello’s attorneys said Green sought unsuccessfully to have the debt discharged in bankruptcy court.

Although his attorneys said they plan to pursue payment from Green, Rastello said none of the money will replace what he has lost.

“All the money in the world is not going to bring my wife or my son back,” he said.

Kelly Rastello was a delightful “gift” at the end of a line of five boys and three girls, his father said during a quiet moment after a press conference. An energetic, warm young man, Kelly just the year before had been honored by the Los Angeles Police Department for helping to save a neighbor from an assailant.

His death, just three weeks after the joyful wedding of a sister, devastated the closely knit Roman Catholic family.

John Rastello said it did not occur to him at first to doubt what police officers told him about the accident.

“If my children got a ticket, they always got a second bawling out when they got home because (I believed) the police were always right,” Rastello said. When his other children began to suspect that the police were withholding something, Rastello said he told them to drop the subject.

“I told them (that) Kelly had made a mistake, it was all his fault, because that’s what I believed,” Rastello said.

Rastello said he didn’t become suspicious until after the funeral, when a watch commander snapped angrily at him after Rastello called to find out who the officers were who talked to the family on the night of the accident. Rastello wanted to thank them.

“He said, ‘What do you want to know that for?,’ ” Rastello said. “I never did get to write that letter. . . . “

Obsessed with the case, Rastello worked so hard to vindicate his son that his employer eventually asked him to retire from his job as an insurance broker.

Church volunteer work and spending time with his remaining children and 15 grandchildren have helped fill the void in his life, he said. But he expressed frustration that the city failed to provide one key thing in its agreement to settle the case.

“Nobody has ever come forward and said, ‘This man was drunk that night and we made a mistake,’ ” he said, quietly starting to cry again. “It’s not right. It’s just not right.”