Death Row inmate seeks new trial in 1966 Sebring murder

Associated Press

FORT PIERCE -- A defense attorney argued Monday for a new trial for a condemned man in the sensational 35-year-old murder-for-hire of a Sebring citrus and cattle baron.

William Kelley of Massachusetts was convicted of first-degree murder in the Oct. 3, 1966 stabbing and shooting death of millionaire Charles Von Maxcy, 41, in his ranch home 100 miles south of Tampa.

Kelley's first trial ended in January 1984 with a hung jury. He was convicted in a second trial three months later, nearly two decades after the contract slaying.

Monday's evidentiary hearing before U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger included testimony about a Boston gangster who may have been the real killer, an attorney's concession that he could have put on a better case and arguments over whether the prosecutor misled jurors.

John Sweet, the prosecution's star witness, testified at both trials that Von Maxcy's wife, his lover, had asked him to arrange the murder because she feared she would be left out of Von Maxcy's $1.7 million estate.

Sweet, a real estate broker, said he hired Boston bookmaker Walter Bennett, who in turn hired Kelley, of Brockton, Mass., and another Massachusetts man for the killing.

Defense attorneys argued that Kelley had been falsely accused by Sweet, who named him 15 years after the killing. In return, Sweet received immunity from the Maxcy murder and from loan-sharking, counterfeiting and several other charges in Massachusetts.

Kelley's supporters include Von Maxcy's daughter, Marivon Adams, who said she's written weekly to Kelley since she met with him in prison after his conviction and he told her he was innocent.

Kelley, 58, listened to the hearing from a speaker telephone in the prison in Raiford.

''At the first trial, I didn't know what to believe,'' said Adams, 41, of Clermont west of Orlando. ''Once I heard John Sweet's testimony, I knew anything that came out of his mouth was a lie.''

Kelley's lawyer, James Lohman, argued that Hardy Pickard, a Polk County assistant state attorney, misled the jury in the second trial when he said Sweet didn't have anything to gain by testifying.

''I was never told that in order to get immunity in Massachusetts he had to testify against Kelley in a Florida court,'' Pickard reiterated to the judge Monday.

However, Massachusetts authorities testified at a May evidentiary hearing in Boston -- which was also part of the defense's motion for a new trial -- that his testimony was contingent on receiving immunity.

Sweet was twice tried for the murder in the 1960s before the state dropped the charges. He has since died. Von Maxcy's wife, Irene, served four years in prison for a perjury conviction stemming from her testimony in his trials.

Also Monday, Charles Busias testified for the defense that his gangster father, Steven Busias, also known as ''Steve the Greek,'' traveled from Boston to Florida around the time of Von Maxcy's murder. He said that when his father returned, he bought a new car, opened a night club and kept rolls of hundred dollar bills in his pocket.

Busias, whose father died before Kelley's trials, said he was never contacted by defense attorneys or asked to testify. In May, a retired gangster testified from his hospital bed that Steven Busias admitted that he killed Von Maxcy.

The defendant's then-attorney, Jack Edmond, acknowledged that those comments would have benefitted Kelley if he and co-counsel had sought out Busias.