By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
MOUNT HOLLY — The Burlington County prosecutor’s office played a series of audiotapes for the jury Thursday at the trial of suspended Bordentown City police Chief Phil Castagna in state Superior Court.
Gary Hall, the prosecution’s major witness in the case, at times held his face in his hands while listening to the profanity-laden recordings, which he said are of him and Mr. Castagna discussing a plot to kill Mr. Castagna’s ex-wife.
“I don’t want to do something you don’t want me to do,” Mr. Hall said on the tape, recorded in the fall of 2004.
A voice Mr. Hall testified is Mr. Castagna’s replied, “You know what you should do.”
“You want your orders?” the voice asks later. “Accomplish the mission. Do your job.”
Mr. Castagna, 47, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and arson in an alleged plot to kill his ex-wife, Joyce Leopold, in a 2003 fire that damaged the back of the couple’s house in Burlington. Ms. Leopold, who was separated from her husband when the fire occurred, was not injured in the blaze.
Mr. Hall acted as an informant for the county prosecutor’s office, and is currently serving a five-year prison sentence in Florida on an unrelated charge. From the beginning, Mr. Castagna has maintained that the prosecutor’s office paid Mr. Hall about $40,000 to set him up.
Mr. Hall testified Thursday that after finishing his work with the prosecutor’s office, he went into the protection of the New Jersey State Police Witness Relocation Unit out of fear for his life, and was kept in the state for six weeks before being sent to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“It hurt me to do what I was doing, but I felt I needed to do it,” he said of his involvement in the case.
He said that after he falsely told Mr. Castagna he had killed Ms. Leopold, “There was a very good possibility that (Mr. Castagna) would murder me to leave no witnesses.”
His identity as the one who made the recordings was kept under wraps until Robin Lord, of Trenton, Mr. Castagna’s attorney, learned it last year. She has repeatedly said Mr. Hall is not a credible witness, and that the county “has no case” against Mr. Castagna.
Mr. Hall said he took only general advice from the county on how to direct his conversations with Mr. Castagna.
“I was nervous,” he said. “Like we’re going to make a movie and you get your script — it wasn’t like that.”
On the recordings, Mr. Hall also makes several references to military-style phrases such as “alpha bravo,” which Mr. Hall said Mr. Castagna used to describe the “mission.”
“This time, the mission I was to accomplish was to murder Joyce (Leopold),” he told the court.
Mr. Hall said problems with the recording equipment he was provided stopped some of his conversations with Mr. Castagna from being taped, but summarized one of them for the court.
He said he called Mr. Castagna after he had broken up with his girlfriend and had nowhere to stay but his car, and was somewhat bothered Mr. Castagna didn’t allow him to spend the night at his residence. But Mr. Hall said he brought the conversation to the murder plot.
“‘I just want to know if you want me to break her legs or put a bullet in her head,’” he told the court he said. “He said, ‘You know what you have to do, now do it.’”
The conversations between the two voices featured repeated tirades against the women in their lives, whom Mr. Hall testified were Ms. Leopold and Mr. Hall’s ex-girlfriend. Mr. Hall said he and Mr. Castagna held the women responsible for their problems.
“Look at me, man,” Mr. Hall said in one of recordings. “I got nothing, I got nobody, I got no money, I got no job. I can’t believe they did this to me.”
Ms. Lord, Mr. Castagna’s attorney, earlier tried to block the tapes from being admitted as evidence in the trial.
Ms. Lord previously sought a stay in both the proceedings and a Jan. 12 ruling by the Appellate Division of Superior Court, which reversed the decision of Superior Court Judge Thomas Smith Jr. and allowed the admission of the prosecution’s audiotapes as evidence in the trial.
Ms. Lord’s request was denied by a state Supreme Court judge.
Previously, Judge Smith decided Jan. 6 not to change his Nov. 7 ruling that the tapes, which required the authentication of Mr. Hall, could not be part of the proceedings because of issues surrounding Mr. Hall’s immunity in the trial. Those issues have since been resolved, and Mr. Hall is protected to the satisfaction of the courts.
On Thursday, Assistant Prosecutor Michael V. Luciano also showed the jury a video, allegedly of a September 2004 meeting between Mr. Hall and Mr. Castagna in which Mr. Hall said he showed Mr. Castagna an inoperable gun provided by investigating authorities.
The video was not entirely visible and the audio was barred from admission into the trial. In the video, Mr. Hall is seen checking a gun just underneath the camera before another figure enters the room. The other person’s face is never seen, but Mr. Hall testified the man is Mr. Castagna.
He said Mr. Castagna gave him the name and location of Ms. Leopold’s place of work, and read aloud a card dated Sept. 23, 2004, with his initials, which Mr. Luciano had entered into evidence.
In 2004, Mr. Castagna was found guilty of harassment, a petty disorderly persons offense, and contempt of a judicial order in connection with the violation of a restraining order obtained by Ms. Leopold. The convictions caused Mr. Castagna to lose his position as police chief in May 2004. The disorderly persons conviction was reversed in 2006 on grounds that “the evidence was insufficient for a finding of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” according to court papers.
The trial is scheduled to resume Tuesday.
