Sandra Sisti is a gainfully self-employed children’s magician, but as she told a jury at Superior Court in Milford Tuesday, her powers don’t extend to conjuring $100 bills out of thin air.
“I wish,” she said. “No, I can’t do that.”
Sisti’s testimony — about finding several $100 bills and the remnants of an exploded dye pack in Beacon Falls — provided a rare moment of levity during the second day of the trial of an Ansonia man on charges he robbed a Seymour bank last year.
Testimony Tuesday ended with Steele’s lawyer attacking the credibility of one of his client’s one-time friends.
Background
Steele, 54, is on trial for the Feb. 16, 2013 noontime robbery of the Webster Bank branch at 15 New Haven Road.
He faces charges of first-degree robbery, conspiracy to commit first-degree robbery, and conspiracy to commit third-degree larceny.
He was charged about four months after the robbery occurred after Seymour police traced a green Cadillac they believe was used in the heist first to Wardell Eaddy, a friend of Steele’s, then to Steele himself.
Police said they also found evidence linking Steele to the heist at motels he had stayed at in the days after the robbery.
Authorities believe others were involved in the robbery, but only Steele has been charged.
Click here for more background about the investigation.
A jury of six jurors and three alternates is hearing the case before Judge Denise Markle.
Click here to read about the trial’s first day.
Erratic Driver Leads To Gun
Sisti was the third witness called to the stand Tuesday by Assistant State’s Attorney Amy Bepko.
The day began with testimony from Seymour Police Officer John Phouangphiarith, who was called to Beacon Falls to recover the bills, tinged with red dye from the dye pack, and the exploded dye pack itself, that Sisti had discovered about 20 minutes after the robbery.
About an hour later, another Seymour officer was sent to the area of Route 8 northbound near the Bridgeport-Trumbull line, where another discovery had been made — a air pistol police believe was used in the heist.
Police discovered the pistol serendipitously thanks to Jason Rodriguez, the manager of the bank branch that was robbed, who was at his girlfriend’s residence in Hawthorne, N.Y. when his assistant manager called him to report the heist.
Rodriguez said he got into his car and started speeding toward Seymour, but slowed down on Route 8 north when he saw a green Cadillac “driving erratically.”
The Caddy was swerving in and out of traffic, he testified, then pulled off abruptly to the breakdown lane.
“As it swerved off to the breakdown lane, the driver rolled down the window and threw something over the car onto the embankment there,” he said.
Rodriguez said it seemed suspicious, so he took note of the license plate on the car — the same as the car Steele was using at the time — and tried to get a look at who was inside while driving by.
He said he saw two people, a black man with a mustache and someone else wearing a hat.
The car then pulled off Route 8 at Exit 11, and Rodriguez dialed 911.
Two state troopers responded to the scene and found the object Rodriguez saw tossed was an air pistol designed to look like a handgun.
Evidence Mounts
Most of the trial’s second day was taken up with testimony from Seymour Detective Brian Anderson and FBI officials as Bepko introduced dozens of exhibits of evidence, from the pistol to the bills found by Sisti to pictures taken at motels Steele stayed at in the days after the robbery.
At one of the motels, Seymour cops seized snow tinged with what they believed to be red dye from the exploded dye pack a bank teller had testified to giving the robber when the bank was robbed.
Jason Brewer, who’s worked as a forensic chemical examiner at the FBI’s lab in Quantico, VA for the past seven years, said that was a first.
“This was a unique item, in my experience,” Brewer told the jury. “I’ve never analyzed snow before.”
Brewer testified that the chemicals found in the dye pack used by the Webster Bank were present on several bills stolen during the heist and later recovered, as well as a pair of gloves and a towel seized from a Milford motel Steele was staying at after the robbery.
But not the pistol or a mask found at Steele’s motel.
Reluctant Witness
Testimony Tuesday ended with a confrontational back-and-forth between Steele’s lawyer, Daniel Ford, and another witness called by Bepko.
But the witness in question — Orange resident Caitlin Mitchell — didn’t go to court willingly.
An investigator in the state’s attorney’s office went to Mitchell’s boyfriend’s residence in Bridgeport Monday to deliver a subpoena compelling her to testify Tuesday. He said she greeted him with a four-letter word.
So when Tuesday morning came and went with no word from Mitchell, Bepko asked Judge Markle to order Mitchell arrested and brought to court.
The judge obliged, and Mitchell was on the witness stand by 4:30 p.m.
The 21-year-old Mitchell said she had known the 54-year-old Steele for about a year. The two would hang out and sometimes smoke marijuana together, she said.
She said she and Steele had hung out in Ansonia together the night before the heist, but she said she knew nothing about the stickup until after the fact.
She testified that she and Steele were hanging out and decided to get a room at the Super 8 motel in Milford that day. She noticed that Steele’s Cadillac had red dye on it that Steele cleaned off in the motel’s parking lot.
Did he tell you anything else about the robbery, Bepko asked?
“I thought he was joking,” Mitchell replied.
Joking about what?
“About how he robbed a bank,” Mitchell said. “But he said it not seriously.”
Did Steele have any cash that day?
Yes, Mitchell said — a “substantial amount” in a plastic bag.
After Mitchell’s questioning by Bepko, Ford launched an assault on her credibility, suggesting first that Mitchell would be receiving preferential treatment with a larceny charge she faces in Bridgeport because of her testimony against Steele.
Ford later accused her of being the getaway driver for Wardell Eaddy, another friend of Steele’s he accused last week of doing the stickup.
Later, he asked Mitchell whether she had ever had sex in exchange for drugs. She said she hadn’t.
Ford also wondered whether Mitchell was under the influence of drugs while on the stand. She admitted to prior use of cocaine and heroin, in addition to marijuana, but said she had been clean since a recent stint in rehab.
“You’re up to your eyeballs in this, aren’t you? You know what’s going on,” Ford said. “You’re trying to get out of this any way you can.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Mitchell replied.
Ford also ridiculed Mitchell’s testimony about Steele’s plastic bag of money, pointing out she hadn’t said anything about it to an FBI agent she talked to the day after the heist.
“You waited until today, over a year later, you have an epiphany, there was a substantial amount of money in a bag in that hotel room, and you want us to believe that?” he said.
“It’s the truth,” Mitchell replied.
Testimony in the trial is scheduled to conclude Wednesday (June 18), with Bepko and Ford delivering closing arguments Thursday, to be followed by the jury’s deliberations.
Steele has been held on $200,000 bond since his arrest in the case last June.
