“If you crossed Tom Spota, Chris McPartland, Jimmy Burke, you crossed everyone,” Mr Hickey, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice for his role in the plan, testified at trial. “They will destroy you. Personally, financially, criminally. They will run after your family.”
“They know no bounds,” he said.
Mr. Loeb was breaking into cars when he took a bag from Mr. Burke’s vehicle. The contents of the bag included sex toys, cigars, and pornography on DVD – items the head of one of the largest police departments in the United States didn’t want anyone to know they had.
When Mr. Burke learns that Mr. Loeb has been captured and that his belongings have been recovered, he goes to Mr. Loeb’s house. He retrieved some of his property, which according to protocol should have been listed as evidence, and then taken to the police station where the detectives he selected were interrogating Mr. Loeb. Mr Burke physically assaulted Mr Loeb, who had already been slapped by the detectives.
In court on Tuesday, Mr Loeb, 34, stood before the judge “as a person of purpose”, he said. “No one should have that much power,” he read from a prepared statement. “Thomas Spota should spend the rest of his life behind bars.”
Mr. Loeb suggested that Mr. Spota try to re-evaluate every case, adding that the former district attorney had “plagued Suffolk County with corruption.”
Witnesses described Mr. Spota’s relationship with Mr. Burke as that of a father and son, or a mentor and disciple. Mr Hickey called Mr Spota “Burke’s fiercest defender and protector”. During the closing arguments, Mr. Spota’s attorney, Alan Vinegrad, referred to the former police chief as “Tom Spota’s professional child, in a way”.
“Helping Jimmy Burke is not a crime,” said Mr. Vinegrad. “Being a worried professional parent, believing that your professional child would never have done such a crazy and stupid thing as walking into a police station house in broad daylight and attacking an inmate, Being worried is not a crime.”