Jurors Told of Cash Found in Priest’s Rooms : Courts: A maid testifying in the trial of Father David Piroli says she discovered stacks and bags of bills.

A parish maid testified Tuesday she was shocked to find bundles of cash, collection envelopes and churchgoers’ donation checks stashed throughout the rectory rooms of Father David Dean Piroli.

And on the second day of the Simi Valley priest’s embezzlement trial, a church official told jurors that the cash looked as if it came straight from the collection baskets.

Seventeen thousand $1 bills--some folded, crumpled, rolled up or creased into paper airplanes by young parishioners--had to be counted by hand after Piroli’s arrest, testified Lyle Hibbs, chairman of the finance council at St. Peter Claver Church.

It took parish officers more than eight hours on June 3, 1992, to count the entire cache, which totaled $47,000, Hibbs testified.

Piroli, 37, faces two counts of grand theft in the alleged skimming of $60,000 in parishioners’ donations from St. Peter Claver in Simi Valley and Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy.

Hibbs told jurors that he blamed the recession for a falloff in church collections early in Piroli’s tenure there.

“I was convinced at the time that the economy was going slow, and we were fairly well convinced (collections were down) due to the layoffs in aerospace and the people losing their jobs,” Hibbs testified.

But after looking at church ledgers, he suspected theft and began spying on everyone who had access to the collection box where parishioners’ donations were stored after Mass.

“It appeared to be all right with the ushers, but I saw one person that was 99% in control of the money at that time, and was moving it from the church” in a canvas bag to the rectory, Hibbs testified.

“That was our associate (pastor), Father Piroli,” Hibbs testified. “He seemed to always take care of the money.”

Donations increased after Piroli left the parish in June, 1992, after his May 29 arrest in Hollywood, Hibbs said.

Police testified Monday that they found Piroli sitting in a church car surrounded by $10,000 in cash, some church collection envelopes and traces of cocaine.

Under cross-examination, however, Hibbs said he never saw Piroli take money.

“Did you ever see Father Piroli take money out of the bag and put it in his pocket, or put it in a box, or put it in his sock or put it in his hat?” asked defense attorney Richard Beada.

“No,” Hibbs replied.

Then parishioner Joseph Barrett gave testimony that could be used to bolster arguments made by Piroli’s attorney, who has alleged that the money really was being skimmed by the church’s head pastor, Father James McKeon.

Barrett testified that he oversaw parishioners as they counted the Sunday morning collections in the church rectory.

Every week, the “counters” put $125 to $150 cash into McKeon’s desk for “housekeeping money,” that was not recorded in church ledgers, Barrett testified.

Following the head pastor’s instructions, they also separated special collection envelopes containing money for the church building fund and the poor and put them into McKeon’s desk, Barrett testified.

Asked to describe relations between Piroli and McKeon, Barrett answered: “Tense.”

At one point, Piroli came into the counting room, Barrett said. “He was talking about Father McKeon losing things, and forgetfulness and becoming senile,” Barrett testified.

Then the parish maid testified, saying she peered into Piroli’s desk drawer at the request of church secretary Eileen Slavin after the priest’s arrest.

“There was a lot of money, clipped together with paper clips,” the maid, Dorothy Meyer, testified. “It was a number of bills clipped together and stacked in back of each other, like, in envelope boxes. Both drawers were full of money.”

Slavin joined her, and the two women searched the rest of Piroli’s bedroom and office, she testified.

They found more bundles of money in boxes in the closet, she said.

They pried open a filing cabinet with a screwdriver and found more money--bundles of cash, loose bills and parishioners’ checks mixed in with green and yellow collection envelopes, she testified.

They moved on to Piroli’s office, where they found grocery bags full of cash in a second filing cabinet, Meyer said.

“I was shocked,” she testified.

By this time, Meyer said, other church officials had joined the search. It even turned up a donation check she had written to the church two months earlier that had not been cashed.

And she told jurors she found a stack of partly burned collection envelopes in the fireplace--which she had never seen used by anyone but Piroli.

Testimony is set to continue today at 9:30 a.m.