Priest Tells Court He Did Not Take $60,000 : Trial: David Dean Piroli, accused in the embezzlement case, testifies on his own behalf for nearly six hours.

Nearly two years after his arrest, a Roman Catholic priest from Simi Valley took the witness stand on his own behalf Wednesday to deny he embezzled $60,000 in collection money from two Ventura County churches.

Father David Dean Piroli, 37, sat in the witness box in crisp white priest’s collar and black tunic for nearly six hours, speaking in clear, measured phrases about the case that has scandalized his former parishes.

Asked by defense attorney Richard Beada if he had ever taken money for his own use from St. Peter Claver Church in Simi Valley or Sacred Heart Church in Saticoy, Piroli was adamant.

“No I did not,” he said. “No I did not.”

On May 29, 1992, police in Hollywood arrested Piroli on drug and embezzlement charges after finding him in a church car with $10,000 in cash, church collection envelopes, traces of cocaine and a Mexican citizen named Israel Palacios.

Five days later, church employees found another $50,000 in cash and parishioners’ donation checks stuffed into boxes and bags in Piroli’s bedroom and office.

Piroli vanished that day, June 3, and was arrested about eight weeks later at Calexico, driving into the United States in a newly purchased car with two illegal immigrants in the trunk, one of them Palacios.

Testifying in the third week of his grand theft trial, Piroli got a chance Wednesday to offer some explanations:

He testified he was trying to put Palacios on a plane back to his family to save him from drug addiction.

Piroli told the jury he had just taken the cocaine away from the man, and $900 of the money under the car’s floor mat was the priest’s--stashed there for safekeeping.

“He was becoming addicted to cocaine,” Piroli said, describing his friend Palacios. “I believe the problems would not exist if he was away (from Los Angeles).”

Piroli said two cocaine-dusted matchboxes found in the car belonged to Palacios. The priest said he had persuaded Palacios to leave them behind.

“I told him to get rid of it (because) he could not go through an international airport with it,” Piroli said.

Police have testified they spotted bills sticking out from under the car’s floor mat and found hundreds of dollars more underneath.

But Piroli testified that he kept $900 under the Chevrolet’s floor mat “for emergencies” because he carried no credit cards and never could be sure a bank would be open if he needed it.

But he could not explain how the rest of the cash found by police got into the car.

Piroli also testified that he kept $8,000 to $10,000 in his bedside cabinet--his personal collection of silver certificates, rare currency and silver Kennedy half-dollars that his father had given him, along with cash gifts from parishioners. And he said he kept some donation checks from parishioners un-cashed because he believed they were too poor to spare the money.

But Piroli told jurors he had no idea how the rest of the collection envelopes and bundles of cash and checks totaling about $50,000 got into his bedroom and office.

Asked to account for the three-inch-thick layer of cash found in his underwear drawer by church employees, Piroli testified it was not his. “I wouldn’t keep something dirty in with my underwear.”

He also could not explain most of the 100 or so door and car keys that parishioners said they found amid the cash, though he admitted owning sets of keys to his parents’ house and his old Toyota and a set of keys to a Santa Paula house given him by the parishioner who lived there.

That said, Beada led Piroli through a narrative of the eight weeks between his disappearance from St. Peter Claver Church on June 3, 1992, and his arrest at the U.S.-Mexico border July 31, 1992. At that time, border agents found Palacios and another illegal immigrant in the trunk of Piroli’s just-purchased car.

Piroli told the jury he left St. Peter Claver Church in fear for his life.

He calmly testified that he overheard church secretary Eileen Slavin talking about him as he returned June 3 from Los Angeles, where he had been explaining his arrest to officials of the Catholic Archdiocese. Slavin has testified she let some air out of a tire on Piroli’s church car because she feared he would leave with the parishioners’ money.

“What I heard her say was, ‘I fixed Father David’s car so he will not make it back,’ ” Piroli testified. “Then she said, ‘I guess we’ll have to buy a new car,’ and at the end of the remark about the car, there was a laugh or a giggle.’ ”

Despite his fears, Piroli said, he fled in the church car with only the clothes on his back, driving on surface streets because he believed the sabotage could cause him to crash on the freeways.

Piroli said he abandoned the church car in Burbank, where he bought another car for $7,000 from his mother. He then picked up Palacios and drove him to Ensenada, and spent seven days driving to Mexico City to reunite Palacios with his family, Piroli testified.

Piroli said Palacios’ family asked him to stay with them. He said he stayed in a hotel for a week because there was no room in their home, but he then bought a bed so he could stay with the family.

At the end of June, Piroli said, he left the car in Mexico and traveled back to the San Fernando Valley briefly and stayed with his mother so he could discuss his case over lunch with Bishop G. Patrick Ziemann.

Piroli said he then returned briefly to Mexico City, traveled back to Southern California to buy a 1987 Mercury Sable for $4,500 and returned again to Mexico City to pick up Palacios.

He said he then drove the man back across the border at Calexico, hoping Palacios could help explain the arrest to Bishop Ziemann. But at that point, Piroli said, they were arrested at the border.

After about four hours’ direct testimony, Piroli underwent cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Mary Peace.

Peace asked about a grocery bag containing $2,000 in cash that police in Hollywood found in the back seat of Piroli’s church car. Piroli said he had never seen it before.

Peace quizzed him about a church employee’s testimony that she saw him pulling collection money out of a bank bag and stuffing it into a paper sack on May 26, 1992. Piroli replied that he was transferring it because the bank bag was full, there were no more bags, and the ushers needed an empty bank bag for a second collection that day.

Peace then asked, “Isn’t it true that your drug of choice is crack?”

“No it is not,” the priest replied flatly.

“Isn’t it true you were smoking crack around two times a week at that time?” she asked.

“No it is not,” he said.

After Beada objected and the attorneys huddled briefly with Judge Allan Steele, Peace continued, “Was there an occasion where Israel Palacios and you smoked crack and shared five ‘rocks?’ ”

Piroli answered no, that there was not.

Under cross-examination, Piroli also admitted he had savings of nearly $20,000 in two or three bank accounts in 1986, but he could not say whether his 10 or 11 bank accounts at the time of his arrest held the $54,000 that Peace described.

Peace then launched into evidence of a journal entry in which Piroli wrote he was taught the church must be protected from scandal--a line of questioning that was interrupted by the end of the court day. Testimony is to continue Monday morning at 10 a.m.

Times correspondent Jeff McDonald contributed to this story.